The ReForging of the Blade
by XMMishimaX
Summary: Tekken 5. Hwoarang x Jin and additional pairings. The last installment of the Sword Maker Trilogy, following The Quality of the Sword and The First Crack in the Metal. See Chapter 1 for additional SummaryDisclaimers
1. SummaryDisclaimer

Tekken 5. The Final installment in the "Sword Maker Trilogy".

Previous Fictions of the Trilogy: "The Quality of the Sword (is Determined by the Wielder of the Flame)" and "The First Crack in the Metal (shows the Impurity of Design".

Summary: The Devil Within has overtaken Jin, sending him into a 2 month rampage of carnage and destruction, believing Hwoarang has been killed by Kazuya prior to the end of the Fourth Tournament.

Hwoarang, recaptured by the Korean Military and reunited with Baek Do San, is slowly slipping down a narrow path of darkness to which there is no escape. Believing Jin dead at Kazuyas' hand, Hwoarang returns to Japan to participate in the tournament to avenge his lover, carrying with him a dark secret. Hwoarang is infected with the Devil Gene.

How far will the Korean youth fall to ease the dark cravings that burn through his blood? And, what will happen, once the two are reunited amidst the agony and torment of Hwoarang's slow descent into hell?

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters written herein, they belong solely to Namco. I do not own the images found on the Mishima Compound website, that too belongs solely to Namco. I do not profit from my work.

Some aspects of character interactions have been changed for continuity of the story. Example: Lee Chaolan is portrayed as Korean and not Chinese/Japanese. His art is defined as Ninjitsu for story purposes. In my writings, Chaolan founded the G Corporation in direct retaliation to the Zaibatsu.

Other facts have been altered or omitted for story content.. Situations have been changed to reflect the imagination of this fiction while trying to closely retain Cannon characterizations.

Pairing: Hwoarang x Jin (in various incarnations. Additional pairings will remain a secret!!)

Rating: NC-17  
Warnings: Strong homosexual situations, language, drug use, violence,

Yaoi, D/s, B/d, Blood Play, etc. etc.  
Status: WIP  
Beta: Sjazz (the most wonderful Beta a gal could ask for!)

Authors Note:

Heavy focus on the plot that culminates with this final section in the trilogy. Yaoi interludes/implied situations are scattered throughout the chapters. Heavy Yaoi in later chapters.


	2. Prologue

The Re-Forging of the Blade (Reveals a Superior Design)

Prologue

The walls of the holding cell had become bloody badges of frustrated fist marks, curled fingers holding the wells of drying essence like trapped, staunched rivers. The Blood Talon nurtured the congealing substance, refusing to release the sanctified and still ebb, as he sat with his back to the wall, knees curled against his chest….face buried into crossed forearms.

The unbelievable, unexpected rage had come hours after capture, sometime after the blurred unconsciousness of a rifle butt to the back of the head had worn off. It had to be after noon by his reckoning of the small barred window held high in the cell.

The anger that had suddenly descended was heavy and instant, drawing the pacing Korean out of his nail biting, nicotine fit reverie into a tirade of streaming curses….a barrage of fists pounding and slamming again and again into unmoving walls. The guards that stood sentry over the holding pen, stared in wonder as blood spattered onto grey walls, watching the suddenly possessed AWOL soldier decimate his fists and growl obscenities that raged in three languages, Korean, English and what sounded like Japanese.

Now, the insanity borne frenzy had passed…like a demonic tide coursing the land, bent on its destruction before receding back into hell. Something shifted, something changed….it was in the air and it was in his blood.

_Jin._

A feeling of death…and a feeling of flight. The overwhelming cloud suffocated the Korean from the inside out, bringing him to subjection, helpless against the cinder blocked and cemented walls. _Jin. I will find a way to get to you, hold on baby. Please, hold on._

"Private," came the address from a third voice, appearing like sunlight through the fog of the Blood Talons exhaustion. Hwoarang lifted his eyes above the tangle of his forearms to see an officer addressing the two guards at the bars of his cell.

"Sir!" The guards said in unison, straightening instantly before the addressing, higher ranking officer.

"I have come to escort the detainee into the Embassy Proper. Open the cell and prepare him for departure," the Officer said, his words instantly bringing the two sentry to life…followed by the sharp metal sound of the cell being opened.

"On your feet, Soldier," the first guard spoke, the sneer in his voice nearly tangible as he reached down and grasped Hwoarang by the forearm.

"Get your fucking hands off of me," the Blood Talon spat, rushing upward with tremendous speed, breaking the hold the guard had placed on him.

The butt of the second guard's rifle connected to Hwoarang's already tender ribcage, doubling him over for a brief second before the Blood Talon righted himself. The fire of indignance burned through his eyes as the Officer stepped into the cell, waving a sealed envelope from between his fingers.

"Soldier. I expect you will not increase your crimes by striking a Military Private. Court Marshall would certainly be the least of your concerns then." His words were stern and yet, almost daring the AWOL soldier to do something...stupid.

Hwoarang's eyes narrowed, shoulders shaking with the venom already refilling at the edge of his talons. "Call your fucking goons off. Now."

"You are in no position to make threats or demands, Soldier. You are to be brought upstairs to face the brass and determine the punishment for your offences. I would not hesitate to put you in chains for that walk, but it may look better on your part if you go willingly and not in irons," the Officer said with a smug smile. "Is this understood?"

Hwoarang set his eyes on the Officer that addressed him, his angular features firmly affixing themselves into smoldering stone. "Yes, Sir." How he wanted to choke those words back…but he very well could not get out of here to find Jin if he did not play by their rules.

"Private. Bring the appropriate fatigues and a bag for his personal effects," the Officer said as he turned and prepared to exit the cell. "See to it the wounds on his hands are addressed and I will return momentarily."

"Sir, Yes Sir." The Private saluted and rushed from the cell as the Officer turned once more to face Hwoarang.

"You have received a correspondence from Seoul," he said, handing over the letter he had previously waved about like a flag. "You have 15 minutes to prepare yourself and I will return."

Hwoarang took the offered envelope, finding no writing or indicating marks on the plain white surface other than his name. As the Officer and second guard walked from the cell and re-closed the bars, the Blood Talon tore into the envelope, curious and slightly fearful of the contents.

Sienna eyes scanned the handwriting….read the contents…and found his fingers shaking hard enough to release the correspondence he had wearily grasped.

"Soldier. Dress and prepare," the returned guard stated, tossing fatigues and long forgotten dog tags into the cell.

Hwoarang looked up blankly as his lips formed around the most disbelieving name to grace the signature of that correspondence. "…Do San".

(Chapter Break)

"What have you done with him?" Jin hissed, fury raging through his blood just as easily as the lightning sparked and licked against his bare fists. He had scaled the Mishima Zaibatsu's highest peak, the Honmaru Temple with speed so fast he might as well have been flying.

Kazuya looked over the quaking, angry form of his son…a cool smile playing against his lips as he imagined Kazama Jin's slow, beautiful unraveling. "Whom, precisely, are we speaking of, my son?"

"If I must ask you again, it will be with my fists," Jin growled, his voice low and dark…anger flickering as the scent of ozone burned the air all around him.

"The Korean street rat you have taken to your bed? Is that to whom we are referring? Can you not sense him, blood drinker that you have become?" Kazuya replied with near velvet eloquence that belayed his smug sense of pride.

Jin hardened his jaw as he stepped forward. Truth be told, he could not seem to link to Hwoarang, there was only the blackness in his mind... the dark arms of unconsciousness or death when searching for Seung. Trusting in Kazuya Mishima, the latter was the spark of truth….and that is what drew the Japanese youth to the Honmaru…to make peace with destiny and the undoubted passing of his lover's soul.

"Let us say…he is…indisposed of." The Younger Mishima's voice was cool and collected as though confirming his son's very personal thoughts. His words were daring Jin to transform…to vindicate the Korean lover he had taken. No plan could have worked more appropriately…to have Saatchi notify the Korean Military via the Embassy and leave a well placed, well planned and handwritten note at the scene of the disturbance. By now, it was undoubted that Jin believed his lover misplaced… or dead at the hands of his own sire. How perfect the trap was and subsequent transformation would be…

"This will end now." Jin hissed, biting back the heavy urge to transform as Mishima Kazuya struck a familiar stance…a stance and art Jin had once begged to learn from Mishima Heihachi, years ago. "I will lick his blood from your hands…and stain my own with your death."

(Chapter Break)

"The Honmaru has suffered a severe explosion. I understand the casualties are great. Unidentified and possibly hostile aircraft has been spotted hovering over the peak of the Zaibatsu headquarters," the returned Officer stated to the two Privates that guarded the former AWOL prisoner's cell. "I will escort our wayward Soldier to his appointment. The both of you are to report to the squad requested by the US military to prepare for any evacuations should the area continue to erupt."

Hwoarang stopped pacing in his cell and turned his angular chin to brace against his shoulder. _The Honmaru…the Zaibatsu…the King of Iron Fist Tournament finale, no doubt. _Panic widened already fiery sienna eyes. _Jin….Jin…._

"I have to get the fuck out of here, now," the Blood Talon hissed, his hands wrapping around the metal bars as the two guards spoke with the Officer, disturbing the continuing trend of the conversation. "Let me out!"

The Officer paused, looking to the captive, now dressed in fatigues and gleaming metal dog tags. "You have an appointment with a Court Marshal, Soldier. You are to remain in the custody of the Korean Embassy until sentence is passed."

"You don't understand…someone…I care about is up there! God damn it!" Hwoarang hissed, even though his voice was pleading. If only he had Jin's demonic strength; he could have bent these bars, laid waste to his captors and flown to the unfolding scene.

"Soldier. Any further disturbances from you and I will recommend myself this Court Marshal is carried out to the fullest possible incarceration. I will tolerate no further disturbances." The Officers voice was heavy, hard and threatening. If he carried through on what he said, Hwoarang might never see the light of day…or Jin, again.

"Yes, Sir." The Blood Talon grit his teeth as he spoke, stepping back as one of the Privates unlocked his cage. _Is that why I can't feel you anymore, Jin? …I am sorry….I have failed you…_ That was when it hit him…as he closed his eyes and prepared for the long walk to fate. Jin…had to be gone…because he truly could not…feel him beneath his skin.

(Chapter Break)

The walk into the Embassy proper seemed so much longer than the stroll to the clink. Hwoarang had only been semi conscious then, enough to straggle his feet as he was assisted by the two guards who nearly carried him to his cell. Now, the heavy double doors parted…inquisitors lights shone, meant to stand the accused at trial with as much intimidation and confusion as possible.

"Soldier," came a guttural voice, heavy in inflection and deep in its authoritative power, "You stand before this Tribunal apprehended from an AWOL status. You stand charged and accused of desertion of the Korean Military in service to our Korean Homeland. How do you plead?"

The charges came significantly faster than the Blood Talon could believe. Surely there had to be a chance to defend himself? Cupping one hand over his brow, Hwoarang tried to look past the intrusive high wattage light to see the faces of this supposed tribunal. "I plead…"

Hwoarang's words were cut short as another voice overtook his own, "I would counsel the accused prior to the plead, your honors, surely our Country can permit such in lieu of my service."

The Blood Talon turned his head in the direction of the voice…so familiar, like a hand out of time, drawing him into the past. The creak of leather sole shoes heralded narrowed amber eyes…and the silhouette slowly came into focus….

"Master Do-San. We will grant your request. You may hold private counsel with the accused." The Authoritative Justice spoke as the older male turned, bowing his head in respect before continuing on to stand before the Blood Talon.

"Baek?" Hwoarang said with disbelieving lips, even as Do San placed a finger to his lips to indicate a time for silence.

"Soldier. Come with me," Baek replied in a curt manner, taking his former student by the upper arm to lead him out of the bright light and into an antechamber guarded by Korean Military Police.

Once the door was closed behind them, granting privacy, Baek stood facing a pale Blood Talon. He beheld his former student with all the stern eyes of a father, disapproval and yet happiness to see the copper haired youth visible in his eyes.

"How…how is it you are here? I thought the letter a lie…and yet, here you are? Ogre? The disappearance?" Hwoarang could not get his words out fast enough, the gears inside his mind spinning with rapid intensity.

"That is a long story, Seung. A very long story indeed. We will have time for that, if you listen to me now…like you have never listened to me before," Baek said with a hard tenure in his voice, Master before Student once again.

Baek moved in the small antechamber, arms folded at his chest as Hwoarang's dazzled eyes beheld him like a phantom…a portent from some ghost story told to frighten children into bizarre and fitful sleep. With a sudden motion, Do San grasped the Blood Talon by the ear, pulling his student closer to him.

"Are you listening to me now, Seung?" Baek said as the Blood Talon twisted downward, forced to look up into disapproving eyes.

"Yes, Master," he replied, but not in fear…in remembrance of all the times Baek had done precisely this when his attentions would go errant in the dojang…like a disciplining father. It was still a matter of disbelief….Baek Do San…alive…and here…

"You are in serious trouble, Seung. Desertion of the Military…is a tremendous offence, regardless of how you might try to explain it away." Baek spoke and released the capture on the Blood Talons ear, giving his former student a chance to recover.

"I know…and I have to get out of here. Someone needs me…like now…" Hwoarang adjusted his fatigues, his eyes pleading with Do San.

"I do not see that as a possibility, Seung. You have to understand, they will not suffer this lightly." Baek returned to pacing, one hand braced beneath his chin as he moved, watching the dejected and wild look in his pupil's eyes. Time had been good to him, Hwoarang noted…though his hair had softened and gone grey he still was an impressive form.

"I will give my word for you. I have been in the employ of the Military for over two years and I have trained most of their recruits in the time after they found me unconscious and near death," Do San continued. "I will recommend you are returned to your service to complete its duration and assist me with training of new recruits…we can only hope my word and recommendation will be enough to save your hide from tanning."


	3. The Grand Masters Design

Chapter One

The Grand Masters Design

Jin awoke with a start, fingers digging into the rain fresh dirt...sifting mud and nutrients with the tips of his nails. The stench of smoldering trees and scorched earth assaulted him as unfocused eyes slowly regained clarity. Forcing himself upward slowly, the Japanese youth drew onto all fours, groaning with the agony of bruised and protesting ribs. The moment of strength met a poor fate and Jin was left crashing down once more onto his torso.

With his cheek pressed against the cool earth, Jin breathed the dirt in, eyes closing once more in defeat as a wracking cough left blood caked lips. The spasms so great with the mass of his body, the Japanese youth forced himself, with every last remaining effort, to roll to his back, where he lay prone and shivering.

The cool silted mud felt like balm against his aching shoulders and slowly Jin reopened his eyes, staring upward into the storm grey sky. The peaks of mountains lay within his sight, hazed by the smoke of this place, casting an almost sorrowful and yet ethereal smog along the edge of his vision.

_The Honmaru…the iron chains that bound flesh above the altar…the cold sneer in the voice that left a human mouth but spoke inhuman words to his mind. Kazuya and the Devil, integrated into one._

"_Give into the anger. Hate me. Curse me!" The words were chanted like a mantra, tormenting the devil within Jin like a schoolyard bully. "Give into the anger. Hate me. Curse me! Think of your poor lover…and his fate…Give into the anger. Hate me. Curse me!"_

_The tribal ink etched itself against the Japanese youth's flesh, the devil within stirring in epic battle with Kazama blood. And then, came the sudden jolt of Jin's head upright…the shattering of chains that crashed the youth to a crouch on the floor…a sickening hue of demonic aura radiating from within…._

Jin drew his forearm up to shield his tearing eyes, shaking from the cold…shaking from the memory. His lips were bloodied and split, his body aching for food and water as though it had been months since last he found nourishment. "What have you done to me?" His parched throat convulsed, coughing the words with what little spit remained in his mouth….

_Kazuya Mishima lay in a bundle upon the temple floor as silver eyes regarded the fallen sire. The transformation had been abated…for the moment…and all thoughts turned to Hwoarang…_

"_Weak and pathetic coward!" Came the wizened bark of a nightmarish voice, the bare foot silence catching Jin's heightened sense of awareness off guard. Heihachi Mishima nearly spat his words as he looked over the heap of his son, sprawled across the floor by the youngest cub of the blood._

"_You will give me what is mine. Vindication. Honor…the devil gene. Ready yourself, boy," Heihachi hissed, an eerie smile creeping across his lips…._

Jin rolled onto his side, fighting the tearing agony as another wave of thought came over him. "Please help me." He curled into a fetal position, his skin aflame as though lit with gasoline from the inside of his very bones.

_The death blow. Jin's fingers pressed forward, thumb curled back. His free hand grasped Mishima Heihachi by the shirt as silver eyes darkened with tarnished glow. The ripping sensation of flesh and bone yielding was nearly pleasurable….long black wings curled themselves outward….only to thrust open with majestic dark ambiance, blood dripping from the obsidian feathers…_

…_and then, in the heat of transformation, the perfect melding of devil and human…the strike of death already cocking back like the barrel of a pistol…that was when he saw…her._

_The image was fleeting and white, ephemeral and incorporeal. The dark almond eyes of his mother, so forgiving and so loving…an angel of light before a demon of darkness…._

…_and just as quickly, she was gone._

"_You have my mother to thank for your life. Kazama Jun." The words pressed through elongated canines and the hand that gripped Mishima Heihachi released, letting the elder crash to the floor._

_With amazing speed, Jin leaned down on his haunches, fingers pressed to the ground to steady him, and leapt upward. Inky wings expanding like a vulture, flapping with automatic response to the breeze that met him….carrying him into the night._

Jin breathed heavily and forced himself once to look around the smoldering clearing. The pain of his body wracked in heavy spasms as breathing became so difficult, his lips expelling the smoke of burnt down trees like one of Hwoarang's cigarettes.

_Hwoarang. Seung Roh. _

_Though the transformation from human to devil had been complete, Jin retained his control. Heavy boots perched atop the roof of the building in the Yurei district like a guardian gargoyle from an old horror tale. It mattered little that it was daylight, that any number of eyes could see the flesh and blood demon some five stories upward, Jin feared nothing more than he feared the pain of losing the one he loved…_

…_and that fear had become reality. Lifting his head into the sky, spiraling horns awash in sunlight, silver eyes looked to the distance as his senses tried to find the mate of his blood. There was blackness still…as there had been blackness before….and Jin, still wearing the guise of the demon, felt the salt of his eyes run down the tribal ink of his cheeks…._

Jin felt the tears running down the sunken in hollows of his cheeks as fingers curled into the ash laden dirt before him. Devil or youth, the agony was like a sword into his flesh, cleaving his heart in two. "Seung." He heaved the name of his dead lover like a prayer, holding it so sacred the very formation of the letters spoken aloud was nearly enough to shatter him, completely.

…_.in the midst of a devil's tears, Jin jolted his head up to the sky. Lost in darkness, lost in sorrow…the snap of his spirit was like a twig beneath his boot. Something awoke…something stirred…something made the devil twitch inside the shell of the Japanese youths remaining strong hold over the beast…_

…_an explosion to the west, on the Honmaru…_

_Weakened by the sorrow, Jin felt himself slipping as far seeing eyes beheld the fires on the Honmaru. The struggle for supremacy against the rising strength of the demon took a shocking twist. A heavy scream left Jin's mouth as elongated nails dug into the roof of the apartment building he shared with Hwoarang. "NO!"_

"_Yes." The demon let a cold smile form over shivering lips, banishing his former captor into the realm of subconscious, where the being himself had lurked for too long. _

_With a sudden bolt upward, powerful wings took flight into the sky like a creature of folklore. Darkness surged through the reborn demon as a chilling laugh left sneering lips. _

_//My time…has come.//_

_(Chapter Break)_

Hwoarang cracked his neck to the side, relieving the pent up tension welled at the base of his collar. Deft fingers clamored over the chords of his guitar; unplugged from the electric current, the vibration of the strings still echoed as loud as an amphitheatre in his mind. Amber eyes beheld the newspaper clipping he kept on the nightstand he shared with his upper bunk mate, even as his fingers moved with wild abandon over the strings.

"**Heihachi Mishima Dead; King of Iron Fist Tournament 5 Announced".**

The barracks were empty at this afternoon hour, the soldiers that shared quarters were dining in the mess hall, enjoying whatever slop the cooks had thrown out onto eager trays. But not Hwoarang. Today was the day he had earned his freedom. And plotted his revenge.

"Hwoarang," came the intrusive voice that shut down the wild concert of his thoughts. Instinctively, the Blood Talon set down his guitar and stood at attention.

"Do San," Hwoarang replied, showing his Master respect. For no one else would he dare perform like a well trained monkey.

"Your last helicopter SpecOps and field maneuvers were impressive. The cadets are sorry to see you go." Do San said, leaning in toward the other side of Hwoarang's bed to run his fingers against the steel cords of his students axe. "I did not know you still played."

"When I have a chance, yeah." The Blood Talon eased up his stance and brushed a hand through tied back tendrils, releasing the shock of copper. At least the military didn't make him cut his trademark tresses this time around.

"So," Baek said, drawing upward as a faint sad smile crept across his lips. He looked to the clipping on the nightstand between double bunks, the black lettering still as sharp here as it was in his own personal quarters, "returning to Japan?"

"I have some...unfinished business there." Hwoarang said with a cold lilt to his voice.

"I know…And I am still trying to figure out exactly what business that is, Seung." Do San said with a slight heave of his shoulders. "You know Chang is well and has recovered. He would not want to see you in this blood sport, again and sit at your side as you did for him."

"You have competed before; you know there are a lot of reasons to put your life on the line." Hwoarang said with that flippant august fire. "Chang wasn't in the fucking tournament. Completely different situation."

"Why else would you return to Japan? You're 21 years old, Seung. What do you know about truly putting your life on the line for something besides your country? The Military is willing to offer you a substantial income to remain here and train. This could be the break you have always wanted, the security wouldn't be such a bad thing either. The Military competitions in the arts are fierce and the rewards are plenty. Think of what you could do for yourself and for your country," Baek said, his tone fatherly.

The Blood Talon tapped a cigarette from his pack, nodding his head to Do San, even as the lighter was brought from his pocket. "You mind?" he asked, second handedly, eyes lingering along his Masters through the already sparked flame.

"You know I do. That habit is the one I just can't seem to break you of." Baek shook his head and waved his hand onwards.

"That's only the half of the habits you would break if you knew about them," Hwoarang snickered and inhaled nicotine delight. "This isn't just about Chang. And it really doesn't matter how fucking old I am. Maybe I can fill you in when I win this thing, set things straight once and for all."

Do San gave that disapproving sigh that could cut through the heat of Hwoarang's gaze like blade made of water. "Your years have not been easy ones, Seung. I have tried to guide you the best I can and I understand your secrets are yours to keep. I wish you would reconsider."

"This is just something I have to do before I become any more unhinged." The Blood Talon paced, his words hanging in the air between them like an archaic holy relic proved to be truth. Two months in Korea had been two months in hell and not because of the regimented training or the completion of his service. He could not recall the last time he truly slept, or felt real thirst and hunger…the Blood Talon could not recall a time when he felt so out of control, raging beneath his own skin….

Do San knew there was truth in his student's words. Hwoarang had always been a raging inferno, barely contained by stone or brick, by strength or authority. But things had changed drastically over the past two months and day by day it was as though the Blood Talons very life force was in challenge with a deeper, more deadly darkness. "Have you seen a Mudang?"

Hwoarang paused his movement. "Did you follow me there when I was on my weekend pass?"

"No, Seung. I did not follow you. I do not need to skulk about in shadows to know when something is wrong with you," Baek said, with the strength of tenderness in his voice.

"Don't worry about me. I'm doing alright. Just have some shit to work out. Now, when is my transport arriving?"

(Chapter Break)

_The Back alleys of Seoul were nothing like the touristy, Olympics sold village of old. It was a place so filthy, so ripe with the stench of poverty and drugs that it nearly made the Blood Talon wistful for the days of his youth._

_Hwoarang had acquired the address from a recruit he trained, a young man he had taken interest in when he saw just a bit of himself in the boy. Abandoned, left to the streets, running with gangs…at least this kid figured out the military was better than a prison cell…or selling bruises on the street to hustle down some extra cash. The boy had said the spiritual leader, the Mudang, had helped him find his footing._

_Now, the Blood Talon pushed past prostitutes and dealers to find the address he had written down on a piece of paper. The smell of human sweat and human excrement was so strong it was nearly overpowering as he moved deeper down the alleyway. How far he had come from these days and yet how hyperaware he was of his surroundings; now more than ever._

_Hwoarang stopped his movement without so much as glancing at the paper scribbled with directions that he carried. There was no number on the building he stood before and yet, he could feel the pull of energy leaking out from between the very stones themselves. His feet carried him forward and the hand that should have knocked politely, was already turning the door handle._

_The Mudang was dancing, moving to the beat of the drums behind her with another person seated before a small table when Hwoarang entered, without so much as a knock. Yet never did her eyes move or the stomp of her feet pause. The Shaman was a middle aged woman, made older by the play of shadows…dark eyes lost in another world did not bother to behold the one who entered so blatantly…even as the Blood Talon closed the door behind him._

_The room was dark with the exception of the flicker of what could have been 50 white candles….the haze of burning incense from what Hwoarang believed were the corners of the room converged at a central point above the dais. The energy of this place was calming…and somewhat overwhelming._

"_You enter here as foretold, Blood Demon." She said, causing a weary look from the male who sat, patiently awaiting the proverbial bridge to be built from spirit world to the mortal realm, in order to make peace with the deceased._

"_You mistake me for someone else, Mudang." Hwoarang snickered. Obviously this was a charlatan, not the real thing._

"_Charlatans would state the obvious, not the unseen." The female came to a stop and looked to her client, redirecting her attentions. "There is tea prepared for you. The Bridge is ready but you must cleanse and purify before the next stage is complete. Excuse us now and prepare."_

_The awaiting male rose and bowed his head, casting a sideways glance to the intruding Korean with outlandishly dyed tendrils. He said nothing and moved into the ante chamber but not before viewing an upraised middle finger from the Blood Talon._

"_Place your offering," the Mudang spoke, coming before the dais even as Hwoarang drew forward._

"_I bring no offering," he said with a cool snicker, hardly believing he was wasting his time on this nonsense - even if his hidden spiritual self told him otherwise._

"_Open the mark and give your offering." She said with a cool voice, nodding for the hasty youth to take to his knees before the small table._

"_I don't know what you mean." But he did. He knew full well what the Mudang referred to._

_The Shaman drew a small copper bowl from the surface of the dais and placed it above a burning flame. "Now is not the time to play coy. Now is the time to face what challenges you know to be truth."_

_(Chapter Break)_

Jin staggered upright, walking as far as his legs could carry him, thankful that the strength of the forest remained...and the area of burnt down tree corpses had only been a small radius of the whole.

The Japanese youth stumbled as he reached a small, burnt down edifice that had once been a house. Yakushima. Somehow, he had made it to the mountain home he shared with his mother, Kazama Jun, a memory that seemed like a lifetime ago.

Jin entered the scorched earth, grasping onto the charred frames of a house he recalled…falling to his knees some distance inside. The agony of memory was so intense, so filled in this burnt place….so strong that he could still smell the fragrance of his mothers freshly washed hair…

…fingers reached out to the ground when the soft pulse of water splashed against his fingers. A pipe line that had once fed the kitchen area was still pulsing with life, feeding the earth itself as he raised his eyes to see small flowers growing throughout the once proud home.

"Thank you, Mother." Jin said with a sob, drawing his whet fingers to his lips to lick them clean. He repeated the action again and again until he found the strength to lift himself up and grasp the mountain pipe that ran just beneath the surface.

At first, all the Japanese youth could taste was liquid mud…but once his strength and will to survive the odds turned in his favor, he pulled the fresh water pipe upward, drinking his fill till he could feel the slosh of liquid in his belly.

Sated after several moments, he leaned down and let the cold water wash his face, cleanse his hands and run down the back of his muddy, bloody spine….errant black feathers rushing down the eroded and created landscape with the foaming, fresh water.

Hwoarang drew the cigarette to his lips, inhaling sharply as he readjusted the army bag that hung from his shoulder. His Transport was taking forever and if he had to look at the disappointment in Do Sans eyes once more, he might actually reconsider leaving his reborn teacher.

For all of his days in the belief his Mentor had been dead, Hwoarang longed for one chance to do right in Baek's eyes. There had been no man more like a father to him, no person that singularly changed his life and showed him the path of the destiny….other than Jin. And yet, the Blood Talon was walking away from it all… with one intent: …to hunt down the one responsible for taking Jin from him, once and for all.

(Chapter Break)

_Hwoarang lifted his right arm, pulling back the sleeve of his black leather jacket to reveal the blood soaked gauze wound around the area just above his wrist. There was pride in the movement of his fingers, lovingly pulling the linens back to reveal the teeth marks…made by his own mouth._

_There was little left of Jin's taste in the blood he consumed, in the flesh he tore open…but every small suckle, each tiny draught…was enough to feed his craving throat and heal his aching body._

_Using his thumb nail, Hwoarang reopened the healing, self inflicted bite wound. A heavy hiss of pain and pleasure left his lips as he did so, his imagination recalling his lovers teeth tearing into the skin…pretending to his own thoughts it was that hot, welcoming mouth once more that craved the heat of his skin._

_Lifting his hand over the heated copper bowl, Hwoarang moaned as he pressed the tender skin to make the blood rise, desire rising in tight denim as he spilled his essence. "That is my offering," he groaned, drawing the open wound to his lips to drink back what he could of Jin's remaining taste._

_The Mudang said nothing even as Hwoarang cannibalized his own blood, moaning with the heat of lust as he pressed his tongue into the thin skin. The sizzle of the blood drew her attentions, the smoke that rose far heavier than what should have come. _

"_When you come, oh gods of eight provinces, come_ _with blessings_

_to the sons and daughters;_ _around their neck_, _tie the iron necklace_

_of long life..._ _We pray and we pray_. _Please accept our small offerings_.

_Oh, fathers and gods of the mountains and rivers._" _The Mudang chanted the ancient words, her head bobbing from back to front as the scent of boiling blood filled her._

_Hwoarang licked his lips, grasping the gauze and retying the opened wound…though he could have re-tasted the heady reminder of his lover for hours and hours, if given the chance._

"_The demon is in your blood, infected by the lover who walks in both worlds and yet belongs to none." The woman's voice was spoken sing song, as though she saw shadow and light dance and mingle in its fine lines. "You feel its call. Heavy to the spirit…the Blood Demon becomes the Fire Demon…and your fate will be as his."_

_Hwoarang breathed heavily, eyes wide as the Mudang gave her prophecy. "He could not have infected me! It's not possible!"_

"_The end to your agony comes only with the end of all things between you. Go to the land of the rising sun and meet destiny when the white and red lightning converge. From the whole, two halves have spawned…from two halves the whole can not counter…before it is too late!" The Mudang grasped the boiling blood with her bare fingers, removing it from flame and the substance eerily congealed in her grasp._

"_The spirits cry…and that which stirs inside of you will claim hold…as it does now, so will it continue until you are fed on the beast that already consumes you…." From her hand, she tossed the thick substance into a nearby soak of water and salt. "Go now, Cursed as you are, and darken my door no longer."_


	4. Rituals of Purification

Chapter Two

Rituals of Purification

Jin sat with his back against his favorite tree. As a child he had climbed its massive limbs often, just to be closer to nature, to view the bird's nests teaming with life as mother fed her young on juicy tidbits of reprocessed worm. It had taken very little time for the animals that were near to trust the curious boy: the sense of the child's respect for nature was strong enough to break the barrier of language and species.

Now, Jin recalled those wonderful days he had explored long through the woods of Yakushima, with a sense of returned fascination and safety. The land was quiet and plentiful and he gently fed himself on the berries he gathered, much as he did in his youth. He was so hungry, so tired and yet he managed to find the strength to forage and slowly sate his appetites.

_Fire. Flames that leapt from tree top to tree top along a vast expanse of canopy forest. Lightning that forked from the demons liquid silver eyes would stop at nothing until the embers of the forest covered over every living thing remaining in ash and evil._

_Massive black wings surged along the sky as the beast circled like a vulture over fresh carrion. The beat of the inky, feathery expanse fanned the lightning induced flames as wicked laughter rang out over the screams of the beasts below._

Jin pressed his head back against the comforting bark of the tree that leant him strength. How long did the destruction continue? How much pain was reaped upon the world in the name of the agony and unnamed awakening within the Demon? First, he believed it had been his former mountain home of Yakushima that suffered the wasting of flame….but seeing the wood alive and breathing around him showed it had not been the case.

The smoldering embers of the radial outskirts of Yakushima had come, undoubtedly, from his crash landing to the ground itself. Perhaps it was the recollection of his mother that brought the beast down as it crossed into sacred air space. The home he once shared with his mother, burned down by his own hand after her death, remained like a charred skeletal edifice…a scorched earth policy as a way to prevent the beast Toshin from returning and spoiling the memories that had once been sanctified in this place.

Now, the question remained…how did the Demon gain control of him so thoroughly…and now that the creature had tasted freedom and flight for however long…would it happen again…? Jin could not remain on the isolated Yakushima forever and the nearest fishing village was clear across the other side of the island, several days walk. Even then, he had no money and the clothing he had worn for however long was tattered and dirty enough to make him appear to be a beggar. What few things he still possessed were in Hwoarangs former apartment, which…he believed would have been cleared out and rented to another…with the Blood Talon…dead.

There would only be one reason to return to Japan proper now and that would be the revenge against Mishima Kazuya. But that certainly could not happen until Jin found himself a way off of Yakushima. Perhaps the youth could return to Australia where the small apartment he had lived in for nearly two years still had a few months left on the lease, paid in advance. He could regroup there, withdraw the monies remaining in the bank account with an assumed name…and plan the strategy…

Rising up slowly, Jin gathered the remaining berries in his hand and set them down on the leaves he had tied together at the stems to make a temporary satchel. The fresh water river he had bathed in as a child was nearby and it was time to cleanse himself, sanctify his body in the waters of his home…cleanse the death and dirt from his body and form a plan suitable for this unexpected phase of his life.

_//Why use the abstract when the obvious is just beneath our shoulder blades, dear Kazama Jin. We could fly long into the night, taste the spray of the water on bare skin…the surge of wind beneath our feathers…//_

Jin shivered as he peeled the stained gi pants he had worn for how long he could not tell…charred and covered in blood, bramble and mud. He placed the tattered material over his arm and walked in toward the rushing cold stream, ignoring the voice that cooed so sardonically into his mind.

//_You will not ignore me…no more than you will contain me. Your weakness is my strength…and in time your temporary vigilance will fail you…and return me to glory…//_

"I will bind you and banish you however I must….I will give you to Mishima Kazuya myself before I allow another moment of destruction," Jin hissed to the voice within, drawing himself waist deep into the frigid, fast moving water.

_//And forsake the power to defeat the one that took HIM away from you….you know where it is we must go…and what it is we must do. To reunite me beneath Kazuyas skin will be your death and not his…but unite us beneath your flesh and your father will die, your lover avenged…//_

"And my soul and body lost to me forever with you at the helm of them both? I will defeat him without your help…and when it is done, my reason to breath is no longer a concern. There is nothing left now for me but the revenge I harbor on Mishima Kazuya and Mishima Heihachi...and the end to your torment of me, Demon." Jin dipped his face into the cold water, bare feet grounding into the sediment below to prevent being sent awash in the current. Forest bathing had once been something he enjoyed…something he could do alone that tied him to the land. Jin was no longer alone…and so long as the Devil within remained…he never would be again.

_//I will not let you do such a thing, my host.//_

"Stay quiet in your cage, Demon. There is nothing now to weaken my resolve…no more sorrow left to power you. I will see my determination through to the end this time. There is nothing more to distract me from the path, nothing to give me a reason to live once my vengeance is dealt…" The voice interrupted Jin's own as the youth wiped away the filth of travels he could not recall from his body…

_//Mishima Heihachi is dead.//_

Jin stopped his ministrations and looked into the current swirling around him. "If that is so then there is only Mishima Kazuya to deal with…a faster end for the both of us." Was the demon right? Or was this a wicked ploy?

The beast grew silent for a long moment before a slow and wicked laugh ripped through Jins mind, making him shiver more than the icy waters that caressed him. The Demon was searching for something. The Japanese youth could feel it drain his energy like a leech, the pulse of his brain starting to hurt…as though dehydration had robbed his thought of vital nutrient.

_//Your attempts will be in vain, Kazama Jin. The hunt is changing…the spirit torn in two has now…become three. Your lover, now our lover…has touched native soil…// _

_(Chapter Break)_

Hwoarang checked the address and tipped the driver as he stepped out of the hired car service. Shouldering his army duffle and guitar, the Blood Talon stepped down onto Japanese streets once more. "This is it," he said with a snicker as he made his way to the entrance of the building in downtown Tokyo, a few blocks away from the pier.

The entire plane ride from Seoul, the Blood Talon was waiting anxiously for this moment. Drawing in a breath, Hwoarang stepped into the door and wound his way to the second floor apartment marked 12F. He knocked with usual impatience, incessant until he heard a click of the lock on the other side of the portal.

"Took you long enough," Chang said with a smile, leaning heavily on the cane beneath his right hand.

"Fuck, its good to see you." Hwoarang grasped his blood brother in both arms, holding him firmly as not to make the balance precarious. He clung to Chang for a long moment before his blood brother pushed the overly tenuous hold away.

"I told you, man. I don't swing that way," Chang laughed as Hwoarang pulled back, wiping away the sentiment that gathered in the depth of his eyes. The last time he had seen Chang was in the hospital, still hooked to machines…torn apart by the beast that was Kazuya Mishima.

"That's what they all say at first," the Blood Talon said with usual, easy arrogance, stepping into the apartment and closing the door behind him. "So, this is the new place huh? Nice."

Chang led Hwoarang into the living room as the Blood Talon dropped his duffle and gently laid his guitar against the wall. "I had to use what money was left at your apartment. Luckily no one went to clean the place out. Good thing I paid your rent up for a couple months but the utilities and everything else I had to turn back on. I hope you don't mind?"

The Blood Talon went into the kitchen to raid the refrigerator. He grabbed two beers, closing his eyes softly as he listened to the labored sound of Chang making his way to the sofa, only to fall back onto the material. His blood brother had told him on the phone that the cane might be a permanent thing…20 years old…and half crippled for life.

"Did you hear me, I said I hope you don't mind?" Chang repeated his words, louder this time.

Hwoarang took a deep breath and put his party face on. Last thing Chang needed to see was pity….or sorrow. "Yeah, I heard ya. Hell, you and the den took care of making that money, spend every last penny on what you need man. I will make us some more."

Chang took the beer extended in Hwoarangs hand, cupping his palm around the top as he tried to force it off. He just didn't have the strength he used to. "We will be alright. There were a few soldiers left on the streets when everything went down. Been running the base of operations from here on the phone. You can understand no one wanted to go back there…after what happened."

Hwoarang watched Chang struggle with the beer top a second time and reached in to grasp the long neck bottle, only to have his blood brother push him back, "You know I can fucking do it for myself, right?"

"Yeah, man. Just trying to…help." The Blood Talon sat on the opposite end of the couch like a scolded lap cat. If it had not been for him…and for Jin…Chang would not have been in this condition…the others…would not be dead. "You know…I'm sorry…Chang. I am so fucking sorry…for all of this. If I would have known Jin's father…was…" _was what, a fucking demon just like his son? _"…going to come after me, I would have disbanded the den….I didn't mean…"

Chang grit his teeth as he tried the bottle a third time before thrusting his arm out to Hwoarang, "Just…open this, will you?"

The Blood Talon accepted the bottle and popped it open, handing it back. He took a long swig of his own and reached into his pocket to grab a cigarette. "You don't mind if I smoke, right?"

"I quit but it doesn't mean you have to," Chang said, looking at the opened bottle of beer in his hand like the badge of his failure. "You know, I don't blame you right? No one does. There is only one way Mishima Kazuya could have found out the location of the den…the same way the Military found you, or so I think. Saatchi. Fucking Saatchi."

"I have had a lot of time to think about how things went down. And man, you took the words out of my mouth. Saatchi can't hide forever. I'm gonna put the word out on the street and hunt that motherfucker down, myself," Hwoarang said with heavy conviction, taking another long sip from the bottle.

"He's gone underground….the network can't seem to find him but then again, your name as a lot more weight than mine," Chang said with a half cocked smile, leaning his beer over to clink against the neck of his blood brothers bottle. "It's payback time."

"For him and for Kazuya Mishima. We have some scores to settle now." Hwoarang narrowed his eyes as he took a drag off his cigarette, the halo of cloy smoke encircling him like a shroud.

"So, you think Jin is really gone then?" Chang asked quietly, clearing his throat to make the words garble into the sensitive subject.

"Yeah…you could say…I can't really…feel him anymore. Don't ask, just call it intuition." Hwoarang sighed and returned the bottle to his lips. "Do San sends his love, man."

"I talked to him a few hours ago, he wants me to keep an eye on you, Seung. Says you haven't really been yourself. I hate to say it, but you look like shit. So, what's going on?" Chang held the amber of his blood brother's eyes. Seeing him for the first time in two months really showed some drastic changes. Hwoarang had lost weight, though none of his muscle mass. It showed in the gaunt of his cheeks, eyes seeming hollow and yet full of a fire that made the intensity of his gaze nearly seem to glow against pale skin; like the reflection of a cats eye beneath low light. The tawny complexion that always seemed alive and tanned had lightened from far more than being out of direct sunlight. It bordered on sickly.

"Not really sure what's going on. Haven't really been myself lately," Hwoarang said with slow assuredness. "Whatever it is, it will work itself out. Went to see a Mudang. I am sure Baek told you that."

"Yeah, he did. He also said you refused to see a doctor on the base. Baek thinks you might have some anemia or something. Says you're not really eating like you used to, kinda low on energy…" Chang breathed in slowly. "You should get that checked out."

"Haven't had much of an appetite, that's all. Things have been a little off the fucking chain, if you know what I mean," the Blood Talon snickered. _Anemia. So now Baek is a fucking doctor too? Maybe it's fatherly fucking intuition…low blood iron…how about…low on blood?_

"He says you're cutting yourself to. Right arm bandaged up for awhile now. What are you doing to yourself, Seung? You know you can't bring Jin back, right? You can't punish yourself because he…is gone." Chang knew he was touching something sensitive.

Hwoarang shot upright and started to pace, brushing his hand back through coppery tendrils. His roots were showing more than he would normally have allowed…but the truth was, he just didn't care anymore. He cleared his throat rapidly as though grasping at the last link of the chain to his sanity. "I'm not fucking cutting myself. God damn, Do San must think I'm some kind of head case! There ain't shit wrong with me, Chang. I just need some time to work things out."

"Are you really cutting yourself? Are you fucking around with drugs? Come on, Seung…this isn't like you and you know it. Baek doesn't toss random shit out into the wind. He's worried...and I can see why." Chang leaned forward, setting his beer bottle down. The already easily anxious Blood Talon was just too edgy.

"I'm not fucking around with any drugs and I sure as shit don't cut myself. The wound on my arm is kinda slow to heal, so alright, I know that's probably a bad sign, but then again I haven't really been sleeping or eating. I keep the damn thing wrapped up so it doesn't get infected." _What a cool liar under pressure. I deserve a fucking Oscar, or at least a Golden Globe. No matter how much I rip the skin…Jins taste is gone. Fucking gone…and I am starving to god damn death without it._

"Alright, Seung," Chang said, knowing in his heart his blood brother was feeding him a line of bullshit…but just hearing that line was enough for the moment to satisfy his major fears of the Blood Talon self destructing. "Do you want to stay the night here or are you going to head back to the apartment?"

Hwoarang returned to the couch, crushing the dead cigarette he left burning in the ashtray. Taking a draught of his beer, he fell back into the cushion of the sofa. "I should probably go back to the apartment and see what the damage is." _Jins scent would be all over that apartment…memories of endless nights…love, lust…pain and pleasure…blood strangled cries of ecstasy in the dark…._

"The place should be alright. I had a few of the surviving soldiers head over and clean up, repair what they could. I know they put in some new windows and replaced the game system, TV and entertainment center. We kinda ran low on funds so we couldn't do to much about the table and some other effects. They had to rip the carpet up too, so the floors are bare in the living room. We just didn't have the man power to make the cash before you got home."

Hwoarang held his blood brothers eyes. "I'll get to work tomorrow and make us enough money that you won't have to worry for anything. Gotta register for the Iron Fist too," he sighed. How could his world have gone to such shit, so fast. "You know you didn't have to do anything for me, Chang. After all I have brought on you…and the others…I should be spat on…"

Chang gave the gang leader a stern, serious look. "Don't say that, Seung. It wasn't your fault…and if none of us blame you…then you shouldn't blame you."

"Easier said than done." The Blood Talon snickered, finishing his beer in one full gulp.

(Chapter Break)

"Father is dead." Kazuya spoke in the most insolent and cold tone.

"So I hear," Chaolan responded in like fashion, pursing his lips slightly. "Are you sure of this?"

"The Devil and I departed from the Honmaru, at the scene of the crime," the middle-aged Mishima spoke, inhaling sharply. A long moment of silence between them.

"So, do you think _he_ will come?" Lee Chaolan sat on the couch, his feet up and crossed at the ankles on the coffee table before the sofa. One hand gripped the crystal stem of the red wine goblet, swirling the liquid slowly as dark eyes beheld it with fascination.

"He will come because his lover is already here," Kazuya snickered as he watched the Silver Devil swirl the red wine along the walls of fine crystal. Drawing his own drink to his lips, the middle-aged Japanese continued his pace about the living room of his adopted brother's uptown Tokyo loft.

The dwelling was expansive, considerably minimalist as fashionable living dictated. The area was filled scantly with expensive smatherings of art and collectibles, showing the former street rat's taste in finer things. Opened skylights in the ceiling radiated the warmth of the summer night as tract lighting filtered down an ambient glow, highlighted with perfectly placed candles. The eternal playboy ran a smooth operation, a gallery of memorable conquests through the elite social food chain.

Where once there was hatred, an uneasy footing remained between the two adopted brothers. Throughout their lives together, there were dark secrets that drew the two together no matter how jealousy and strife attempted to tear them apart.

"And how do you know this?" Lee asked, though he was sure his brother had ample resources. The Yakuza for one, remained closely tied to Kazuya…the mere mention of his brother's name was enough to have the heads of the Japanese mafia fork over tremendous wealth to the G Corporation that had in fact, restored Mishima Kazuya to life. One of Chaolan's best endeavors yet.

"There were informants on the Blood Talons plane. I understand he is in Tokyo now and will certainly register for the Tournament. We simply must find a way to manipulate the situation to our benefit…if we intend to ensnare Kazama Jin." Kazuya leaned his elbow along the mantle, turning his eyes to Chaolan. "Can you get close enough to Do Sans prodigy to attain a sample?"

"I can get close to any whom I chose, Kazuya. You know this well enough," Chaolan gave a cold, side long smile. "You think he has been infected, then?"

"I am positive of it. With what we have retrieved from the Zaibatsu's research laboratory, there is certainly enough evidence that the Devil Gene can take to blood if the host is prime enough to handle the transition. You are the scientist, not I," Kazuya snickered, sipping his wine. _Lovely bouquet._

"It has failed in trial runs our dearly departed father ran on himself. There is a strong possibility that, in theory, the sample can not take unless the subject is in fact prime and open to receiving. I certainly would agree that lovers would be receptive. Much as you...and Jun...and the transmission in her pregnancy." Lee sat like the pretty bitch he was, self absorbed in his own intellect. "But you do realize what that means, dear brother?"

"And what is that, Chaolan?" Kazuya snickered, setting one gloved hand into the pocket of his black slacks.

"Our potential subject, if infected, can be lured by the very thing that he undoubtedly craves," Lee purred, leaning forward to grasp a slice of expensive cheese from the tray he had put out to entertain his guest, taking a nip from the end to taste the essence of the wine mingle with the sharp apricot white stilton. "That of course, being, blood."

"Jin's blood is in short supply." Kazuya set the glass down on the mantle.

"This might be the case…however, your blood…is certainly plentiful and…accessible." Lee leaned back on the couch, watching his adopted brother with cool, arrogant eyes. "…and could, if given enough, change loyalties on a pathogenic level."

"We could create a perfect weapon to ensnare Kazama Jin…and the completion of the integration with the Demon would finally be complete." One red eye gleamed from beneath the sunglasses Kazuya always wore to conceal the anomaly. "I would finally quest no more. Now, how do you intend to make this reality?"

"It seems we have similar tastes, Hwoarang and I. I am sure I can use a more elegant persuasion to corrupt the young pup….and lay down the trap for the taking." Lee rose and drew toward the poised vision of Kazuya. The gleam in the eyes of his adopted brother was one he had come to know many times in their long years.

The gloved hand that rested in the pocket of black slacks rose, bracing against the curve of Chaolans cheek, a cool sneer of disgust falling over Kazuya's lips. Power in exchange for power. "You are a disease, Chaolan…a dangerous infection….

"…as you have said, so many times before," Lee snickered, holding Kazuyas eyes with the depth of his almond gaze…captivating beneath shocks of molten silver tendrils.

TBC...

Beta: the most awesome Sjazz


	5. Prayers Over Steel

Chapter Three

Prayers over Steel

The downtown Tokyo streets were a blur to the Blood Talon's eyes as he tore through the familiar roadway, hell-bent toward the club district he had come to know and love. Chang had luckily kept the keys and his bike. This was a well added bonus to the nights unfolding.

Leaving the duffle and guitar at his blood brother's apartment, Hwoarang rode into the late hour scene in the district with fury. There was no way he could return to the apartment, well kempt as it had been…not when so much of Jin still remained there. He had to lose himself in drink and excess…lose himself…from himself, before he could even try.

Skidding into the parking lot, Hwoarang revved the engine loudly for show…before kicking the stand down and pocketing his keys; dismounting like a cowboy from a sturdy, metal horse. Nodding to the bouncers, the Blood Talon walked through the normal line and security check at the door…infamy was just his middle name.

Hwoarang made his way slowly to the bar at Club Oblivion, letting the scent and sights overtake him. Mist and sweat mingled beneath lasers and strobes, the heart pumping primal beat was as sweet as candy melting in his throat. Never before had the Korean seen this place, in just this way. The delicious heat of bodies grinding, sexual energy winding like tendrils from skin to skin. It was delicious over-stimulation…and hyper awareness. Was he seeing the Club through Jin's eyes…or more appropriately, through what was left of Jin's heightened demonic blood in his veins?

"I could learn to fucking like this," Hwoarang purred at his dangerously enhanced vision and drew up to the bar, licking his lips of the erotic tastes that seemed to catch like a net against their whet silk. Throwing a few yen on the wood, he ordered the cheapest bottle of scotch on the menu. Two months ago, it would have been the other way around….with plenty of cash to burn.

(Chapter Break)

Jin rubbed his palms along the shoulders of his borrowed attire. He had walked several hours in his tattered clothing before coming upon a fresh line of linens hanging in the afternoon sunlight. Amongst the family's humble sheets and towels rested a pair of loose knit sweat pants with matching jacket, dark grey with burgundy accents on the shoulders and collar. Of the other bits of clothing that waved in the breeze, he surmised this set would be the only to fit him, loose as they appeared. How low had he become?

Taking the set from the clothing line, Jin hurried off into the woods like the thief he was. How far one would go to survive, taking from those who had little in order to clothe himself who had naught. There was no justification in Jin's mind, he had already become so much of what he never believed he could be. Liar, thief…attempted murderer…a demon seething with hatred and revenge….a destroyer of nature….an abomination of nature….

All of these things the Japanese youth had done to survive had chiseled away at his ideals…had made him taste bile when he realized how far he had fallen from grace. Jin vowed to himself that he would pay for these garments before dealing out the death blow to Mishima Kazuya….salvage some semblance of his former design before the Demon consumed him whole.

Taking the time to change, Jin laced the boots he had been wearing for however long and tucked the tattered gi pants under the arm of his borrowed jacket. He would have to trudge into the next day, under the cover of foliage and darkness, to reach the other side of the island. With luck he could barter passage back to Japan Proper with a fishing crew in exchange for manual labor.

_//And if they do not accept you and this plan, will you whore yourself to the lonely fish boys to return to the shadow of love you cling to? Why degrade yourself thus…when you can simply…fly to him…feathers spread majestic on the wind only to scoop our lover up and devour him as you desire. You make this much more difficult than it need be…//_

"You will not find freedom again, Demon. Not so long as I draw breath," Jin hissed, bracing one hand into his hair. The demon's voice cleaved his brain, making the cavity seize with a pain so great, it was shocking The Devil was gaining strength inside of him…every day since it had been caged…it drained the Japanese youth more and more…it would only be a matter of time….

_//I would be careful what it is you say, Jin. As you lose your energy…I gather it and store it…when next I taste the wind...it will be you who is erased from all memory, never to be seen again…not even in thoughts of our precious Seung.//_

"Do not speak his name, beast. For whatever hold you believe you have on him…" Jin hissed, eyes clenching as the pain in his head slowly began to subside, "…you will never have…what is mine."

(Chapter Break)

"Steve motherfucking Fox!" came the bellow, reaching out through the pulsing beat and heat of the Club like a lion's roar. This was the last person he thought he would see back in the Martial Arts circles after the well publicized World Boxing Championship title was signed, sealed and delivered to the British youth.

"Hwoarang?" Steve laughed, disbelievingly. He had thought to find the Blood Talon once he was in Japan but he never fathomed it would be so...easy. "Is that really you?" He drew closer to the Korean, watching Hwoarang lean up from his protected territory at the bar.

"What the hell are you doing back here? Thought you would be off working your title and shit." Hwoarang grasped the Brit close, giving him a warm and affectionate embrace.

"What better sport than the Iron Fist could hone my skills any more, eh?" Steve laughed, releasing the embrace slowly. "God damn, you look like shit! Been drinking alone too long?"

"You're no fucking prize yourself and you ain't even drinking yet." The Blood Talon snickered and offered his half wasted bottle to the Boxer. "So, you register yet or you just cruising the scene looking for a few good men?"

"That part of my life has gone the way of the dodo, I am afraid. Extinct." Steve took a heavy draught of the cheap scotch, coughing at the burn in the back of his throat.

"I like a good challenge," Hwoarang half cocked a grin, that devious glimmer in his haunting amber eyes.

"And that's about all you like, eh, mate?" Steve laughed, returning the bottle to its rightful owner. "Julia and I are trying to make a go of it. Been difficult with her reforestation project and my traveling to defend the title, but we are both back for the tournament. Her plane is coming into Tokyo later tonight. Speaking of which, where's that lovely little husband of yours?"

"Dead. Far as I can tell." Hwoarangs smile at the little sarcastic quip faded as fast as rain clouds overtaking a hot savannah sky. Amber eyes fell to the floor for a moment as he pretended to look for something of interest near his feet. Just thinking of Jin…was painful. More alcohol required.

"Hwoarang, I am sorry." Steve said no more, taking a look around the floor, apparently to locate the same phantom object that kept their eyes from meeting. "So, you staying at the hotel this time around?"

"No, think I'm gonna go back to the old digs, get settled now that I've seen Chang. Just needed to blow off some steam before registering for the Iron Fist." The Blood Talon shut away his pain and returned a false jovial smile to his lips. "So, killer, how's it feel to be top of your game…world champ…and all that shit?"

"Not really what I thought it would be, but can't complain about the paycheck. Hey, have you come across Wulong recently?" Steve reclaimed the bottle from Hwoarangs grip, taking another swipe.

"Interpol Asshole?" the Korean huffed. "I sure as hell hope not to cross his path. Don't need to do time for tanking a cop. You got some leads on your mother yet?"

"Some, yeah." Now it was Steve's turn to shut down, taking a second heavy pull on the rapidly depleting bottle. "Well, I have to hit the hotel and register for the room and the tourney. Thinking about hiring a car, want to split it?"

"I've got my bike. You need a lift?" Hwoarang said with that returned glimmer in his eyes. "I'm sober enough to drive, if you're crazy enough to attempt it."

"Hell, that wouldn't be the worst adventure we've had, eh?" The Boxer returned that wicked glimmer and laughed heartily enough for Hwoarang to hear him over the music as he fished for the keys to his bike in an overly tight pocket.

"That's for shit sure. Let's roll." Hwoarang snickered, taking the last pull of the bottle before handing the remains over to Steve. Within seconds, the draught was empty and the Brit followed the Blood Talon out into the warm night air.

(Chapter Break)

It was all Hwoarang could do to grasp the bike up and prevent it from toppling over to the ground. A half drunken foot forgot to release the kickstand and as the Korean rose off the cycle, hands on the bars, the beast began to fall.

"Holy Shit!" he hissed, forcing the bike to right itself…taking several swipes to get the kickstand to come down. "Little fucking help here, Foxy."

Steve laughed heartily enough to taste the reverb of the cheap scotch in his senses. "You're fucking killing me." He managed, leaning down on his knees on the curb, to move the kickstand with a strong, tenuous grip on the metal.

"You grab that kickstand just a little too well for a straight boy." The Korean half cocked a grin as Steve drew back to height, flushed at the comment.

"Don't go getting any ideas in that thick head of yours," the Brit struggled for a comeback comment worthy of banter, his words stumbling over a bit more tipsy than he wanted them to sound.

"Flattered you remembered. But hell, it is thick and magnificent, ain't it?" Hwoarang raised a sculpted brow before breaking out into a laugh. "Shit, you limey bastard. Let's get registered."

Steve, thankful for the distraction, followed a more drunken Hwoarang into the lobby of the hotel he had stayed in not long ago. The marble floors were polished enough to create a 4D effect, reflecting the elegant chandeliers and cherry wood finished structures that gave a rich, American feel to the five star Hotel.

Hwoarang nearly collapsed over the high counter as his amber eyes tried to focus on the two attendants that watched him in abject horror. "Hello Ladies. Well, look at that. Two of us and two of you. Well, my straight friend here is a taken man now…so that's just one more for me…"

"Don't mind him. He's drunk." Steve tried to contain a non intoxicated face, setting crystal blue eyes as stern and serious as possible. "I am here to register for my room as compliment of the King of Iron Fist Tournament. Name's Steve Fox. My baggage is coming in on a later flight…"

"By that he means his girlfriend," Hwoarang snickered and glanced over his shoulder at the nasty little look the Brit was throwing him.

"By baggage, I mean suitcases and yes, my girlfriend is coming in this evening. Julia Chang, also here for the tournament, can you arrange it so that we are rooming together…" Steve shook his head as Hwoarang leaned his chin down against crossed forearms.

"I am sorry, we must give all the tournament competitors their own rooms, orders of the Mishima Zaibatsu," the nearest Japanese attendant nodded and smiled.

"What, you don't fucking introduce me?" Now it was the Korean that shot the Brit a nasty glance as the verdict on the Boxer's request was rendered an unfavorable loss. "Hwoarang. No need of the room. Well, hell, its free right. Book it and same as my friend here: I'm all about the tournament…except I'm gonna win it. Ain't that right, Foxy?" The Blood Talon blinked a few times as the other attendant handed both men two signature forms…one for the room, the other for the Tournament.

"Whatever you say." Steve shook his head and handed over his signed papers in exchange for a slim, clear plastic key card, encouraging Hwoarang to do the same.

"I don't have any baggage. You see...my boyfriend is dead…" The Korean stood up, despite the surprised look on the attendants faces, letting his attempt at humor cloak his inner pain. He grasped the clear plastic keycard after two attempts, sliding it into his back pocket.

"Come on, Hwoarang. Time to get you some rest. I will come back down and move his bike…" Steve said, bracing the Blood Talon on the spine.

"Like fucking hell you will. My bike is like my bitch…hands off." Hwoarang protested, even as Steve led him away from the scene he was causing and over to the elevators.

(Chapter Break)

"I am Lee Chaolan. I am here with the Zaibatsu…and I have seen what a terrible scene the young Korean male has just made. The King of Iron Fist Tournament will not tolerate disrespect from its fighters," the Silver Devil feigned annoyance.

"I will speak with him at once but I will require the roster sheet to confirm the signature to the face." Lee smiled that deliciously charming smile. His name, like his reputation, was a well known staple of culture and eccentricity in the Japanese Social Elite Circles. For any who knew him, they knew at once of his standing with the Zaibatsu…and little else of his fall out with the conglomerate. There was virtually no chance of discovery with such former accreditation…and such obvious covert lying skills.

"Of course, Dono Chaolan," the female attendant flushed, overcome with the Silver Devil's charm, her quivering fingers lingering on the papers that were still freshly inked. "As you request…"

"What is someone as lovely as you doing working here? Please…accept my card…" Lee reached into the pocket of his tailored leather aviator jacket, withdrawing a slim silver casing. Once opened, he produced a thin watermarked business card, "My secretary will refer you to our Human Resources Department."

As Lee withdrew his fingers from the card, he drew up the papers the attendant had been shakily offering. Scanning over them briefly, he noted the two signatures. Steve Fox, the World Boxing Champion…room 532...Hwoarang room 524. Returning the papers to the obviously fascinated female, Lee flashed his brilliant smile once more. "Please take me up on my offer…and thank you, from the Zaibatsu, of course."

Chaolan slowly made his way to the elevator, wondering of the Boxer…who had made mention of a girlfriend, Julia Chang…adopted daughter of Michelle Chang…. Ahh, such memories. Now, Lee considered if Steve would be staying with Hwoarang till his friend was obviously more sober…or if he would find the Blood Talon alone…and vulnerable.

"Here, let me see it," Steve laughed, taking the card from Hwoarangs unable fingers. With a single swipe, the door gave a slow metallic click, indicating the lock undone. "Now, follow me."

"Who died and made you Squad leader?" the Blood Talon quipped, pushing the door open and stepping in before Steve.

"Look, I am going to check out my room and phone Julia before she boards the plane. I need an exact time to meet her at the airport. Will you be alright for a few minutes?" Steve lingered in the doorway as Hwoarang drew himself onto the bed.

"Fucking right as rain. Don't worry about me," Hwoarang waved the Brit off.

"Alright, be back in about 20 minutes. Sober it up a bit, a'right?" Steve laughed and exited the room, closing the door behind him.

It could not have been more than a few moments later that the knock roused Hwoarang from a half dazed power nap. "Fuck...you're back fast," he yelled out, drawing onto the plush carpet that muffled the metallic sound of his spurs. "Damn, miss me that much, Foxy?" the Korean snickered as he parted the portal.

"Hwoarang," came the elegant voice of the suave, silver haired man standing before the Blood Talon.

"Who the fuck are you?" Amber eyes looked over the older man with a sneer. "If you're selling something, head a few doors down. Room 532." The Blood Talon began to close the door in the face of the distinguished looking patron…when a boot caught itself between the wall and the portal.

"I am not here to sell you something, Hwoarang. I have come for a social visit." Lee said in a smooth, almost seductive voice. So, this was the infamous Korean that ensnared a tender and impressionable Jin Kazama. It was little wonder. For as rough as Hwoarang appeared, there was a certain mixture of arrogance and danger that undoubtedly drew Jin into willing worship, on hands and knees. _Delicious._

"Well, I don't do social visits, pretty boy. Get your foot out of my door before I break it off." Hwoarang hissed, looking over the silver haired man as though seeking a weak link in a chain.

"And what if I told you…this social visit concerns Jin Kazama." Chaolan smiled like a diamond catching the light. "Of course, if you wish for me to fail in my mission to bring you this gift…that will ease you of his passing…then by all means, I take my leave of you."

Chaolan turned, pretending to lose interest in the game; in truth, nothing could have been further from his mind. Hwoarang opened the door wider and looked out into the corridor, his vision still blurry…though not nearly as swimmy as before. "What gift are you talking about?"

"May I come in?" Lee said, without turning around to face Hwoarang.

"What's the gift?" he repeated, pursing his lips like the arrogant bitch he was.

Oh, could Lee nearly taste the Blood Talon's breaking. What a perfectly passionate Korean specimen the youth was…how like Chaolan himself was once, long long ago. "I will need privacy to unveil it to you."

"You're not some high paid hooker are you?" Hwoarang snickered, leaving the door open as he walked inside. Lee was quick to follow, shutting the portal behind them.

"I have been called nothing of the sort," Lee countered, squaring off his shoulders as he fell into a lissome, fluid stance, eye to eye with Hwoarang. The Korean beauty was a treasure to behold. Paler than he would have imagined, though the brilliant copper of obviously dyed tendrils was slowly growing dull. The youth was built well, toned and muscular from training, yet still retaining an almost lithe appearance to belay his undoubtedly superior skill as a Martial Artist and soldier. Hwoarang's facial features were angular, chiseled, with sculpted ebony brows that were natural in their flow…lips the color of dew kissed carnations…smooth and welcoming.

But it was the eyes that caught Chaolan more than any other feature. Eyes that ranged in intensity from amber to darker sienna…ringed, it appeared, with a coppery almost liquid fire around the irises. Kazuya had been right; this youth was infected with Jin…being eaten alive by the lack of the demon's blood…the scent Lee knew better than any other...the devil's mark, strong enough to taste.

Hwoarang's right lower forearm was bandaged, Lee noted. He could almost imagine the Blood Talon tearing into his own skin to drink like a starving vampire...only to find no sustenance he craved remained.

"What the fuck are you checking out…you looking for a good time, old man?" Hwoarang slid his hands into his pockets as he watched the Silver Devil appraising him…like a rare coin…or a contestant.

"Forgive me, Hwoarang. I was merely making sure you were ready to receive this," Lee said with a slow smile, the tip of his tongue licking against the edge of his lower lip.

"Sounds like a fucking line if I ever heard one. That shit don't work on me, gramps…so lets not waste any more of my precious time. Get the fuck out," the Blood Talon hissed, his patience stretched thin. How could he allow himself to believe this old man had something for him…from Jin?

"Then you do not desire his blood?" Lee nearly purred, watching Hwoarangs face blanch a shade paler than he already was.

"Why the fuck would I want his blood? Just leave whatever little gift you have for me and see yourself to the door," the Korean tried to counter against his countryman with a brazen lie. By the slant of his eyes he could see Chaolan…was wearing the mark of shared nationality…either way, he was not falling for the bait.

The Silver Devil stepped in closer to Hwoarang, reaching the tip of his manicured nail against the Blood Talons cheek. With a voice so delicate, so velvet, Lee let his breath caress his captive's starving lips, "Because you crave it, Hwoarang. Your lover infected you with his…secret…and after supping from the most delicious wine…you're starving to death…physically and spiritually, without it. The sweet taste is a pleasure unlike any other…and no pleasure is found now, without it."

The Blood Talon blinked rapidly as the slow, tantalizing words lingered over him like flint over stone…ready to kindle a fire. "I...don't know what you are talking about."

"Of course you don't. Why would you admit to the painfully beautiful act of tearing Jin's flesh apart with your teeth just to bathe your tongue in his blood? How sick you must feel…for the act itself…and yet, how sick you have become without it. How like a junkie…needing a fix," Lee continued, watching Hwoarangs amber eyes burn into him like fire.

"Leave it here and get out," the Blood Talon hissed. Whether it was the talk of blood…or the talk of his long nights with Jin…his body was responding with phantom memory…and very real longing.

"I will deliver this to you, as I have promised." Lee reached into his leather aviator jacket, withdrawing a single, dark liquid vial, holding it out for Hwoarang to grasp. "But I warn you…"

Hwoarang took the ampoule, clutching it in his fist as the scent of blood took hold of his senses. All questions of the silver haired man, his motives and his sources, fled the Blood Talon's junkie mind as he held, at last, that which he craved... "What…are you warning me of…" he nearly moaned, the tip of his tongue rewetting dry lips.

"The first taste is free, Hwoarang…after this gift...it will cost you…whatever price I chose to name," Lee purred, so close to brushing his lips against the Blood Talons dry, aching mouth. How sadistically delightful this passionate creature must look in leather and irons, pleading and shaking…

Hwoarang stood, transfixed, the vial held fast in his fist, even as the Silver Devil slowly backed away. Reaching once more into his pocket, Chaolan withdrew a thin, etched silver case, producing an elegant water marked business card. In a swift motion, the velum silver embossing flashed along deft digits…reaching out from between Lee's first and middle finger. "I will leave you this…and let's see what you do with it."

With the pawns on the chess board moved, the Chaolan walked to the door, parting the portal once more…giving a side look over his well toned and leather clad shoulder. A cool, almost cruel smile formed over Chaolan's elegant features as the Silver Devil walked out of the hotel room…closing the door behind him.


	6. The Spirit of the Forge

Chapter Four

The Spirit of the Forge

"Hwoarang?" The Boxer parted the open door he was sure he had shut upon leaving. "Are you alright?" he called out, stepping in carefully. If his life had taught him anything, it was to be cautious of whatever might be lurking in the shadows beyond line of sight. "Hey, do you hear me, mate?"

Nothing met his senses but a hint of heavy breathing, and a strong pungent smell in the air that reminded him of copper. The odd aroma was something Steve had not noticed upon first entrance into the Blood Talon's borrowed compartments, nearly a half hour prior. "Hwoarang?" He called again and stepped into the main bedding area of the Korean's hotel room.

Hwoarang was sitting, back to the corner…legs folded up and bent against his chest…hands wound around his shoulders. "Fucking hell!" the Brit hissed and rushed to the Korean, kneeling instantly before him. "What happened?"

Amber eyes that leapt with unnatural fire met the Boxer's azure hue. The Blood Talon had been rocking himself, a soothing motion that continued even in Steve's presence. "Hey…do you hear me?"

Hwoarang cast his head to the side at a nearly awkward angle, looking to at the boxer as though, for that moment, he had no clue as to who Steve was. "Jin?"

"No, Hwoarang, it's me, Steve…What the fuck is happening here...what's wrong with you?" the Boxer asked, eyes scanning the Blood Talon for injury...for any sign this was something normal and man made.

The Korean blinked rapidly several times…lashes of ebony meeting to his cheeks as he tried to regain clarity. The blood that entered his senses felt otherworldly…felt so right and yet so wrong. "Steve…Steve…" he reclaimed the name with the bend of his lips, his hand reaching out to the boxer…

Steve met the Blood Talon's offered hand, using his body to draw the Korean upward, watching Hwoarang fall back against the wall. "Your lip...is bleeding. What happened?"

Hwoarang drew the tip of his tongue along the remnant of blood, lapping it deep into his senses as the room re-formed beneath his gaze. It was not his blood, but Jin's…from the vial the silver haired man had left with him. Starving, thirsty…two months of agony and withdrawal slowly abated itself deep within the core of his spirit. "I...I don't remember." A lie. The vial that had been lodged in his hand, had been drawn to his lips and drained; its precious contents taken into his spirit...was now lost somewhere on the carpet beneath the bed.

Using the corner to brace his body, Hwoarang brushed a hand through copper tendrils, so in need of a dye. One hand fell along the Boxer's shoulder, near the join of the neck…as refocusing eyes beheld the beauty in his grasp in a way, he believed, he had never seen it before.

"Come and sit on the bed, a 'right?" Steve took Hwoarang by the hand he held and drew him to sit on the bed, nestling in beside him. "I haven't been gone that long, Hwoarang. What's going on?"

"Just...a bad dream…" the Blood Talon moaned, his elbows pressed against his knees, holding his head as wiry tendrils sprung out between his fingers. Such euphoria, such perfection…it was as though all of his body had been saved by the blood he ingested….blood of the demon lover no longer in his grasp.

"One fucking hell of a bad dream, Hwoarang," Steve huffed, winding an arm around the Blood Talon to keep him steady…and close.

"It's better now…because you are here," the Korean hissed, pressing his lips against the boxers warm neck…mouth aching to bite deep and ready into yielding flesh.

Steve closed his eyes as a heavy breath passed his lips, one hand rising into Hwoarang's coppery dyed tendrils. "You should not say such things…" his breath was a moan, forcing him to pull away from the velvet that met his skin.

"Shouldn't I? Fuck…I can smell you…the musk of you…" the Korean hissed, licking his lips of the salty taste of Steve's skin.

"You're not right, mate. Something is definitely not right. You have to lie down, get some rest." Steve took a heavy draught of air, fighting the hedonistic pull that was Hwoarang. "Come on, to bed with you."

The Blood Talon rose up, unsteadily at first, coming to stand between the Boxer's legs, hands leaning down on spread thighs. "To bed with me is right…But I want you…just as much as you want me. I can smell your heat…your desire…you want this as much as I do …and for so much longer…"

Steve felt his chest heave as he closed his eyes, "No, Hwoarang…those days are behind me now…"

The Blood Talon pressed Steve back into the bed, one leg between Steve's parted thighs. "I smell what you fucking want, Foxy…I smell it…and I'm ready to give it to you!"

The Boxer tried to find Hwoarang's eyes through the coppery tendrils that fell against the Korean's amber gaze. He groaned as he felt the weight of his former lover atop him…fingers pressing into the blades of Hwoarang's shoulders. "No…I can not go back to that…to that place where you were so good for me…and so fucking bad for me…"

The Blood Talon removed his shirt, tossing it to the floor behind him with little care where it fell, sliding his body against Steve in the most delectable way. "I feel alive again…and I want you…screaming…"

(Chapter Break)

The car pulled along the curb of the hotel procured for the King of Iron Fist Tournament 5. The blackened window slowly lowered as a dark smile met the lips of the occupant, "Is it done?"

"It is," Chaolan hissed with a wicked smile across his features, the door unlocking from the inside. The Silver Devil slid inward, one hand brushing through molten silver tendrils. "A glorious situation, so rife and ready for all the debauchery the blood allows."

"Excellent," Kazuya snickered as Chaolan drew in beside him. "It is only a matter of time before my blood works its way into Hwoarang's senses…and draws my son ever closer. Are you assured he will return for more?"

"I have little doubt my phone will ring in hours. The next dose will be offered through the veins directly, now that the urgency of his body is fulfilled. Jin will come, if he still lives…"

"He lives. I feel it in my blood as does the devil within me," Kazuya hissed, crossing his legs in the expanse of limo before him. "And what will you do, Chaolan, when the call comes?"

"I will have him, of course. A delicious specimen such as that can not pass my bed without serious questioning. Would you like to watch his breaking….leather and irons….to subjugate his base desire?"

"Your base desire," Kazuya corrected, pursing his lips ever so slightly.

"As though I could pass on something so beautiful? But you did not answer my question. Will you be there to watch?"

"As though you have to ask, Chaolan. I trust you will make it a show worthy of my attentions."

(Chapter Break)

Jin pulled the ropes that levied the sails of the small freighter, using the heavy counterweight through a small opening to procure the materials alignment. It had been a difficult two days, making his body work in a way that both trained and punished him at the same time. It was nowhere near the intensity Heihachi had put him through in the beginning: …The trials of fire…a hundred candles to be burned out with Chi…or the Trial of strength…a hundred Jack Prototypes to be slain with merely the power of his Fatal Lightning.

Every moment was an eternity, and unlike the other sailors aboard the vessel he slept upon deck, curled in the naval pea coat given to him when he signed on for the adventure. Few parsons talked with him, thinking him an illiterate boat hand looking to get off of the island and find wealth in Japan Proper. He much preferred it that way, no questions, no answers.

There was only…Hwoarang.

It would be at least three days journey to the port of Japan Proper, outside of Downtown Tokyo…but three days of pay to give him money to prepare himself once ashore.

_//Dangerous things are afoot, Kazama Jin. We must make haste. The wind is good from the bow…we could make time to fly, be there in hours instead of days if you merely heed my words.//_

"I heed nothing you say, Demon," Jin whispered into the cold of the night, his eyes closed as his chin and lips pressed against the upturned collar of the pea coat.

_//You would say different with greater eyes. Love means nothing to infidelity. Our other taints himself in the land of British Isles…an adversary defeated and yet reborn…these months later…//_

"Steve Fox," Jin's eyes darted open, watching the crash of the waves come aboard deck, 40 ft from where he rested. "You lie, Demon."

_//For your benefit, believe so. Though we both know otherwise….//_

_(Chapter Break)_

Hwoarang pressed deep into the cleft of Steve's Body, hands on either side of the Boxer's form, spread out and face down against the bed. It had been too long since the sensation had taken him, his body at the mercy of the tight walls that milked against him.

"Fucking take it, baby…take it like you can't breathe without it!" the Blood Talon hissed with eyes tightly closed, arching himself with wild desire deeper into his lover's core….even if the lover he envisioned in his mind...was not the body beneath him.

"Ahh…Hwoarang…you're...hurting me…too much…please…hurts too much…" Steve begged as his fingers wadded the sheets beneath him, eyes tightly shut as every stab seemed to breed fire beneath his skin.

"You love it rough baby…bring me off with your pain…" Hwoarang cursed as he fell further into his fantasy, holding himself buried against the Boxer's most delicate buried treasure with such pressure, such wanton heat…he could barely breathe. "Let me see some lightning baby…I want the burn on my skin!"

Steve grasped his thick length with coned fingers, countering pain with pleasure as the Blood Talon cleaved him in twain. "Fuck...Hwoarang….too hard…too much…" he moaned, a place inside himself battling with pleasure and pain…finding some middle ground as he brought himself to a pitch with the thrust of his hand.

"I'm gonna cum baby…so fucking hard…" the Blood Talon groaned, pressuring the back of his hand along the Boxer's neck, pressing Steve's face down viciously into the mattress till the Brit swore he could not breathe.

"Fuck...Hwoarang…"

_Seung…_

…_it was Jin's mouth that formed the words in his mind, bringing the Blood Talon to a dangerous pitch as he thrust deeper into the Japanese beauty writhing beneath him…_

The Korean hissed, pressing himself hard into his lover's body with every pull before stilling, the knot of desire heavy in his already tight sac. "Jin…fuck baby….I can't hold it back…."

Steve hissed into his own release, arching his backside harder into Hwoarang's already vicious pace …feeling the heat against the condom press into his milking core. With a hard cry, the Boxer gave into the sensation of hand and pressure…biting against the covers beneath him as he spilled himself along the borrowed comforter.

The Blood Talon drew upward, his body releasing Steve's core as he moved. Rolling the condom down, he tied it off once it left his swollen crown, letting his body fall back against the wall as heavy breaths left his lips, the vision of Jin begging beneath him fading away like mist. "God damn…" he hissed in guttural fashion, watching the Boxer's body spread open and vacant now that his thick length had left such an eager core.

Steve rolled down to his knees before the bed, gasping for breath, "I can't feel my fucking legs…."

"Take it like a fucking man," Hwoarang hissed, tossing the tied off condom to the ground. "God damn, that was just what I needed, Foxy," the Korean groaned unconvincingly.

Steve rolled over to his sore backside, letting his head fall against the coverlet of the bed he had just spilled upon, though with the motion he was just enough away from the collection of his own seed. "You called me...Jin…"

"No I fucking didn't," the Blood Talon defended, pulling his jeans up above his hips and fastening them.

"You did…you said his name…clear as bloody day," Steve belted from kiss swollen lips, his body arching to reach up his slacks from ankles to hips.

"I don't remember that." Hwoarang breathed in once more, trying to right his lungs from the sudden onslaught of exercise. "Shit. I forgot just how good you feel."

"That's cause I am normally on top." Steve rose up, using massive arms to brace himself against the bed till he was seated atop the mattress…bed sheets pulled off the corners with their…lust. His body was sore, anguished from the steady stream of abuse he had taken with a greedy desire and now…wondered if his actions were the proper ones to have taken at all. "I'm not fucking with you, Hwoarang…you called out to him."

The Blood Talon ran his fingers through coppery tendrils, drawing himself toward the bed. "Whatever. You got off…I got off, what the fuck does it matter?"

"You're right, it doesn't matter," the Boxer said with a shake of his head. "You know this doesn't change anything, right. I want Julia…" Steve hissed defensively, running fingers through nearly platinum-white locks. "This can never be spoken of."

"What the fuck ever." Hwoarang threw himself onto the bed, still fighting to catch his breath. "Ain't nothing gonna be spilled out from my lips. If you want to tell her that her man likes it in the ass, so fucking be it."

"You're bad for me, Hwoarang. You know that just as well as I do. This can't happen again. I can't handle it…" Steve breathed out, refusing to look over his shoulder to the Blood Talon.

"In too deep, Foxy?" the Korean snickered with cruelty, his hand digging into the pocket of his jeans to withdraw a much needed cigarette.

"Stop calling me that. You and I…we don't belong together. You have Jin…and I have Julia…" Steve sighed, breathing out sharply.

"Jin is dead. Remember?" The lighter came to life with a flick of the Korean's thumb, the heavy inhale drawing blue tinged smoke from his dry lips.

"Not in your heart, he's not. I know what I heard, Hwoarang. I can't put myself through this. I lost to him in flesh, but I can't fucking lose to him as a ghost." Steve rose, using his hand to brace himself against the wall above the lamp beside the bed. "For as good as you are…I can't let you ruin me. Julia is who I want to be with…and this never leaks out, understand me?"

"There's the door, Foxy. Don't let it slam your ass on the way out." Hwoarang cupped his palm, using it like an ashtray as he flicked his cigarette embers into skin. "No word from me…no worries on that. But thanks for the good fuck…that's two months of cum overfilling the rubber that smells of your ass."

"You need help, Hwoarang. But it's more than I can give to you." Steve said, reclaiming his shoes from beside the bed, his socked feet slipping into them with quick motion. "Think about seeing someone, a'right, mate?"

"I'll do that…the moment you stop thinking about me while you fuck that girl of yours, Foxy," the Blood Talon hissed, waving the British Boxer off, as smoke trailed from the cigarette between his fingers.

Steve wanted to say something, wanted to bait a quip worthy of Hwoarang. No matter how he tried, the Blood Talon was just something he could not get out of his mind or his body…a dark thought in the dark of night…a hand beneath the covers in recollection. "Sleep it off, mate. I will see you in the tourney, right?"

"Later," the Blood Talon hissed as the door to his room slammed closed, flicking the ashes of his cigarette into his palm once more. Senses so alive he could almost feel Steve's inner anguish and yet he could do nothing about it. Had he called the lover beneath him by a sacred name, out-loud rather than in his thoughts? Had the blood that infected him and strengthened him…made him see and feel what was not there?

_//Jin is far from gone…closer than you think. We will find him together, Seung…and we will drink from him until nothing but a husk remains…//_

Hwoarang shot upward on the bed, the ashes he cupped in his palm scattering all over his jeans. "Who said that? Who the fuck is there?" Wild, fire rimmed eyes scanned the room….finding no one to answer his questions…

(Chapter Break)

"Miharu! I am finally here, I am checking in right now. These two nice ladies just gave me the waiver to sign. Don't worry, I am going to call my grandfather and let him know I made it." Ling pressed the small cell phone between her ear and her shoulder, signing off on the two forms and sliding them back to the Guest Attendants as she gave her best-friend the play by play.

"Alright, I will call you when I get to my room." She continued, turning to point at her pink suitcases, on the trolley just behind her. With a manicured nail she pointed to her effects, silently asking if someone would bring her bags to her new room. "If you really want me to, I will take pictures and picture message them to you. Alright, let me go and I will call you back…."

Rolling her eyes, Ling lifted the phone and flipped it closed. "I'm sorry about that. Um, can you ask someone to take these to my room for me. And is there a list, I want to see who has come back for the tournament…"

Placing her cell in her purse, Ling looked up to the attendants to find out about the list and a wide smile spread across her glossy lips. "Hwoarang??? You're back!!" she cheered gleefully as the Blood Talon turned, narrowed eyes looking for the source of his name.

"Midget," the Korean snickered, his right hand brushing back through his hair, left placed in the pocket of overly tight jeans.

The Chinese youth bounded toward the Blood Talon with her normal show of energy, grasping him into a hasty embrace, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. "Everyone has been freaked out about what happened to you…especially after the whole thing on the Honmaru…We thought you might have been up there with Jin…Steve was worried sick! Have you seen him and Julia? Are they here yet?"

So, that explained why Steve had acted so disbelieving when the two had met up hours ago in the Club. "I haven't seen anyone, yet. You're the first," Hwoarang snickered, marveling at just what a convincing liar he could be. "So Jin was up on the Honmaru then, that's a definite?"

"Oh my god, yeah! The explosion killed Heihachi, or so Grandfather told me…the final stage of the last tournament was held up there..." Ling bit the edge of her lip, not wanting to say anything more. There had been no word of Kazuya or Jin…the place too badly burned to find remains…but both were rumored…dead.

"Where were you? Where have you been?" Ling crooked her hip, ignoring the incessant ring on her cell phone, now buried in her pocketbook.

"Ambushed by the Korean army…had to finish out my time. You gonna get that?" Hwoarang rolled his eyes at the ridiculous style ring sound from some popular Japanese anime.

Ling slid her hand into the pocketbook, rifling around till she drew the pink cell phone up, hitting the side button to ignore and end the irritating ring from who else but Miharu, again. "You don't look very well, Hwoarang. When was the last time you ate something?"

"About an hour ago," the Blood Talon snickered, referring to a mixture between Steve and the vial of blood he ingested. "Look, you go check into your room and I will catch you around sometime, alright, Midget?"

"Oh no you don't! We are going to get something to eat, the bar in the lobby serves food too. My bags will make it to my room and I am already checked in...got the keycard right in my purse…somewhere. Ugh, whatever. Lets go, we have tons to talk over."

Hwoarang rolled his eyes and exhaled sharply. "Don't need anything to eat. Could use a drink though. The Bar it is." What kind of luck was this, to finally find some freedom away from the nauseating sensation of starving to death without Jin's blood…only to end up running into Ling. The Blood Talon swore he just did not have the patience for this….

(Chapter Break)

After close to an hour and several drinks, Hwoarang was looking around the bar for a plan of escape. The pain was slowly returning…from what he could imagine, the blood that sated him had done its job…but he needed more than a few drops to keep the agony away…to keep the pain from returning. How like a fucking junkie he had become…

Ling pushed her plate aside and sipped her soda, studying the Korean with keen eyes. Something about the Blood Talon was very...different…haunted…and the Chinese youth was sure she understood why. Jin. Rumored to be dead, Ling tried her best not to believe it…but when no word came, not even to her grandfather…she started to get that sinking feeling, the rumor, might have been true.

"So, why did you come back here, Hwoarang? …This must be really…hard on you. I mean it's…hard on all of us…" Ling swallowed harshly, watching the play of dim lights against the Blood Talon's features. The Korean was gaunt, pale skin replacing the tanned flesh she was used to seeing. Copper tendrils were dull and hopelessly in need of a dye…but it was Hwoarang's eyes that seemed the deepest gateway to his pain. Amber eyes were wild, ringed with a solar shock…a flare that lunged out and imprinted itself along the rim of the irises. The pupils were narrow, partially due to dim light…and the faraway look in those eyes seemed to Ling to scream of someone with an addiction to drugs. Had the Korean started using substances more dangerous than marijuana to ease the passing of Jin's life? Or was it Jin's blood he missed most? The thought made the Chinese youth cringe slightly as she recalled that late night…Hwoarang's kitchen…the smell of blood and sex lingering on their skin…a nightmare she never spoke of to another.

"Let's just say, I have my reasons," Hwoarang sighed, leaning back in his chair, fingertips thrumming absently against his lighter laid out on the table top.

Ling bit the edge of her lip, not wanting to push the already moody Korean to the point of getting up and leaving. It was nice to see a familiar face; it made her feel somehow closer to Jin's spirit to be sitting and sharing a little while with Hwoarang.

The rumor of Jin's death had been difficult to take…and Ling could only imagine how Hwoarang must have felt. She wondered if the Korean ever got the chance to tell Jin that he loved him…that little piece of knowledge Hwoarang had let her become Privy too months ago. Somehow though, Ling doubted the Blood Talon ever went through with it. "So, are you staying here in the hotel or do you still have your place in the Yurei?"

Hwoarang lifted his hand - the bandage reduced to a simple folded gauze with tape - and scratched the back of his neck. "Probably going back to my place. Chang kept it up for me so it makes more sense to just crash there and stay out of the politics of this thing."

"So you wouldn't mind having a visitor just happen to drop by and make some breakfast one day?" Ling smiled. She did not know how Hwoarang could possibly possess the strength to remain in that place without Jin.

"Don't plan on being there much. Have a den to rebuild." The Korean was his usual flippant self, even as eyes scanned the exit…trying to form a way to escape from Ling and get on with his night.

"Oh, that reminds me…there is this new club opening up - I think it's called Dominion or something - down by the pier. The flyer said Friday night…" Ling huffed as Hwoarang's eyes wandered…

Steve Fox walked into the bar just as Hwoarang turned his eyes, catching a glimpse of white blond hair walking into shadow, "I should really get going, have a few things to take care of…"

"Oh, there's Steve!" Ling stood up, waving one arm in the air as she called out to the Boxer. "Steve!! Over here!"

Hwoarang wanted to sink lower into his chair to escape, but instead he followed instinct and sat upright, arrogant facade sliding over his features with practiced ease.

The Brit turned at the calling of his name, seeing Ling…at a table with Hwoarang. The last person he really wanted to deal with after the events upstairs almost two hours before. Having little choice, for fear of upsetting one of Julia's closest friends, he resigned himself to walk over there…and keep it as short as possible.

"Ling, how have you been?" he said warmly, drawing the Chinese youth into a warm embrace.

"Where's Julia?" she asked, grabbing a chair and drawing it over to the head of the table she shared with the Korean.

"Oh, she will be in soon, plane lands really early in the morning," Steve said, casting his eyes toward Hwoarang with inner guilt and malice. "I am going to head out in awhile and prepare to meet her. Caught up with Wulong, he's going to come along with me. Better than hiring a car. Police escort all the way."

"Aren't you even happy to see Hwoarang? Remember how worried you were when you thought he was on the Honmaru…after Jin fought you in the semi finals? I mean, you couldn't really see that well after, eyes all black and blue but you still wanted to go looking for him." Ling smiled, watching Steve's face change to a shade paler than he already was.

"Yeah. Hwoarang. Good to see you." Steve said, half heartedly, extending his hand as though he had not spent a solid hour writhing in pain and pleasure beneath the possessed Korean just a short time before.

"That's alright, Foxy. Don't know where that hand has been. Feel free to keep it to yourself," Hwoarang snickered, returning his attentions to the lighter on the table, fingers thrumming the cool metal with newfound fascination.

"Well that's kinda icy," Ling sighed, sliding into her seat and leaning out to tap the one she had stolen for Steve. "Come and join us, have a drink…or have five like Hwoarang over here."

"I...really can't. I was just looking for Lei. Thought he said he was coming in here so I was going to wait and have a quick drink before we caught up," Steve stumbled for his words, bracing his hands on the back of the chair.

"It's a shame, really, Foxy. I do love your company but maybe you're just a little too sore to be sitting with us right about now," the Korean snickered, casting the Brit a side long glance, rife with innuendo. "You know, title and all. Hope this new life works out for you."

Steve went from pale to flush, biting the edge of his lip as he tried to conceal seething rage. Hwoarang could be the most pleasant person and yet the biggest asshole, depending on which hand the leonine Korean felt like holding out. It was obvious after their little fall out, it would be the left that dealt punishment for injured pride. If only Jin had not been a factor in all of this…there would not have been jealousy…or competition…or rejection. Steve really could have pictured himself with the edgy Korean…but that was another time, another place…another country…

"Ling, I will make sure Julia gets in touch with you sometime tomorrow, I am sure the jet lag is going to be something as bad for her as it was for me. Flying from the United States is certainly longer than from the UK." Steve said, already excusing himself and walking away before Hwoarang could stick another quip in.

"That wasn't very nice. Why are you mad at Steve? Didn't you two have a sorta thing, if I remember right?" Ling said, chewing on the straw to her soda, one arm folded against her stomach as she watched the Korean with disapproving eyes.

"Let's just put it this way, Midget: the guy totally has it for me. Some people just can't handle being second best. So, look, I should get going. I have a few things to take care of before I hit this shindig for the opening of the tournament." The Blood Talon rose, leaning into his pocket, he tossed some yen on the table to cover his drinks and Ling's dinner. It was the least he could do for being such an asshole…but he just couldn't help it….even if he did like the Chinese youth as more of a friend than he would have ever admitted to anyone but Jin.

"Alright, fine. Whatever. Go and run away, but you know where to find me and believe me, buddy, I know where to find you." Ling narrowed her eyes, glaring at Hwoarang as the Korean walked off. The ring of her cell phone buried in her purse sounded through the quiet bar area…as deft fingers reached in to grasp it.

"Yes, Miharu. Sorry about that...I was just having dinner with Hwoarang…yes the very same …Jin's boyfriend…well, former boyfriend, I guess….." Ling sighed softly, guilt ridden for her anger at Jin when he snapped at her months ago…the changes within seeming to tear him apart. She was sorry…that she could never make things right…just as she was sure Hwoarang was sorry he had never told the Japanese youth how deeply he really felt for him. Two separate pains the odd duo would be forced to live with…for all of their days and nights…for the rest of eternity…sharing in common the spirit and memory of Jin Kazama.


	7. Invoking Masume

Chapter Five

Invoking Masume

The Blood Talon parked his bike on the gravel area that led into his apartment in the Yurei district. For a long moment he sat there, engine still running with the sweet vibration of steel coursing through his veins, dragging on a cigarette till the burning filter made him flick outward onto upturned rock.

Exhaling sharply, Hwoarang killed the ignition and slowly stepped off the American cycle, standing before the entrance as the key to the outer door flicked against his fingers. "Come on, its now or fucking never," he cursed to himself, making one foot step before the next until the lock was in his grasp.

He had left his things behind at Chang's house. Strategic planning just incase he could not handle what was awaiting him. Closing the outer door, the Korean made his way up five flights of stairs, till he was standing face to face with the door…recollections filling him of the night he and Jin stumbled to his home…barely making it into the door…barely able to take enough time away from each others mouth…to open the portal.

Steeling his strength, Hwoarang slid the key into the lock, hearing the metallic click like a harbinger of the past. Sliding the door open, he reached his fingers out to connect against the light switch, flooding the corridor and kitchen with luminescence. "Honey, I'm home," the Korean said to no one in particular, but the spirit that walked with him through the haunted steps into the apartment.

The place was clean, the undercurrent of bleach strong in the hall as he closed the door behind him. There was such silence it was nearly deafening. Each step from corridor to kitchen and finally into the living room was heralded with the feeling of glass underfoot. He could nearly hear the sound of the Military busting into his home…the click of rifles and the laser red scopes that pointed to his chest through the open dobok.

Shaking his head softly, the Blood Talon stopped in the living room, closing his eyes as memory overtook him. Ling on the floor, asleep…Jin on the couch, afraid to draw near and yet so wanton of the Korean's touch it was almost aching. Steve on the floor, struggling to defeat the Blood Talon in a Martial arts game that pitted style against style…representing the great motions…including his own, TaeKwonDo. Jin…getting ready to leave for the semi finals match, drawing in against the Korean's body for one last kiss…one last plan to spend the day after before the finals came…

Wincing slightly, Hwoarang let his eyes wander back to the table…the very area he had taken Jin with rough desire, sating two bodies, two spirits, before knowing of the curse his lover carried. There was the sharp taste of blood, the recollection of lust so intense, it nearly caused the table itself to splinter beneath every thrust. "I miss you, baby," Hwoarang hissed, taking a deep breath.

Flipping on the light in the living room, the Blood Talon moved forward and held out his hand to flick the switch for the hall leading into the bedroom and bathroom. Jin's scent, even with cleaning, was strongest here and it hit him like a brick to the back of the head.

Pressing his spine to the door of the bedroom, the Korean let himself absorb the sensation…let himself linger in the hot nights spent in lust and desire…striving to fuse two bodies into one. The agony of those memories was sharp enough to make Hwoarang want to weep…and yet, he could not allow not fall to the ground sobbing as he wanted…no tears would bring back Jin…no amount of agony and longing would ever make that phantom touch real again.

The burgundy comforter with gold strands that hugged the bed was made so perfectly, the Korean could not think to disturb it. Moving toward the bathroom, Hwoarang flipped the light switch and ran the cold water, leaning down into the basin and splashing some into his face.

Opening the medicine cabinet…the Blood Talon had to pause…as though frozen by the items that appeared on the inside. Jin's razor…deodorant…toothbrush. Simple everyday items that somehow became holy for the absence of their owner. Hwoarang slammed the glass door closed quickly and doused his face in the cold water. Every light in the apartment was on…and yet, the ghosts of memory still remained.

Stepping back into the bedroom from the bathroom, Hwoarang looked around once more. Jin's jeans had been folded neatly at the corner of the bed, beside a pair of his own forgotten denim. How much more could he take? Everything smelled of the phantom he missed…everything was haunted by a ghost that never knew…just how much it had been loved.

"I'm gonna lose my fucking mind in here," Hwoarang hissed, moving out of the bedroom and back into the living room. He could not stay here…no matter how he wanted to…he just could not bring himself to live and breathe Jin like this…not when the pain of his lover's passing hurt so fucking much.

The gnawing hunger inside of his skin burned through the Korean's core as he moved. "I'm sorry baby…I am so fucking sorry that you're not here. I know you're with me…you gave me something of you…this curse...this blood lust…and I don't know how to make it go away. It's you, but its not you…and I am going to have to sell my soul to fucking keep you with me…."

The Blood Talon leaned against the wall of the small dining room that bordered on the kitchen, running his fingers through his hair. "I don't know what to do baby…help me…"

The tears were ready to fall at the rims of his eyes when Hwoarang choked back his breath, walking back into the bedroom once more…into the closet armoire he had not touched since Jin last cleaned the place. His fingers found the garment, long before his eyes could behold it. The black leather trench…musty from two years of storage. A memory from the days when Jin was still beneath Heihachi's rule…left at the den….before they went their separate ways.

Sliding the material on over his shoulders, Hwoarang closed the closet door. Flipping his keys into his hand, he looked once more around the room. "I love you, baby. Wherever you are, I hope you're not lookin' down on me…cause you won't like what you see."

Shutting down the lights as he moved, the Blood Talon locked the door to the apartment and slithered down the stairs, the trench trailing behind him like black leather wings as he moved. Drawing onto the bike once more, Hwoarang lifted Chaolan's calling card, memorizing the numbers on the watermarked, vellum cardboard, rife with the silver glow of embossing at a great expense. "Not yet. I have survived all this time without it…I can make it longer, if I have to…."

Revving the engine to life, the Korean turned the handle bars and backed up through the gravel…his headlight tearing down the road like a beacon to cut through the darkness.

(Chapter Break)

Daylight broke over the freighter and Jin roused himself from sleep. The wings of leather that rode his dreams cut through dawn like the wheels of Hwoarang's bike…the sunlight heralded in the wake of a halogen beamed American headlight.

"Winds are coming in Starboard. Kazama, turn the sails right and come for your breakfast. Can't have you dying out on deck of starvation," the Captain said in sharp Japanese, turning his attentions back to the helm of his ship. The nets that dragged the bottom for fish were slowly hoisted upward, spilling live creatures onto deck…flailing fins and screaming gills fighting desperately for life and the pursuit of water, once more.

"Ai, Captain." Jin replied as his hands released the sails, turned right to catch the wind. Every moment was a moment that brought him closer to home. Closer to the questioning sensation of Hwoarang…was his lover in fact, alive, as the Devil Within had indicated? Had the Korean been unfaithful, as the entity dictated? It could not be…love rang through Seung's veins, even if the words were not spoken, the fact remained clear as day.

The Japanese youth walked below deck, seven hands aboard to do the job he had done through the night, with what little sleep he had received. Drawing himself into the lower decks, Jin had to admit he was hungry….even if the Demon in his blood was hungry for even more. It took constant vigilance to keep the beast under bay, to prevent unleashing the damage the unholy one had done to a small woodland island, not far from Yakushima.

The scent of food built Jin's hunger as the Japanese youth held his plate out to the mess crew, eager for proteins to fill his body. Every moment was a moment closer…so soon to come to the lands he knew…lands that would be alien after the freedom of the demon.

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang parked his bike at the hotel, slinging the red card of ownership onto the handlebars, showing the slip that matched his room number. Though the Blood Talon did not go inside…it was just at the mark of dawn…and the Korean was far from sleepy.

Taking to the street, the gang leader let himself walk onward, through the alleys and walkways several blocks from the five star hotel reserved for the King of Iron Fist Tournament. The taste of blood rang through his senses...as did the slight nausea now that the infected substance was finally absorbed into his system. The euphoria wore off, like a hard come down from a chemical substance, making the Korean's senses feel…swimmy.

Swallowing hard, Hwoarang held onto the alley wall and pulled out his cell phone with his free hand…placing it between his lips as he foraged for the velum, water marked business card his "dealer" had left behind.

The Korean turned slowly, letting his back brace to the alley wall as he dialed the digits, letting himself sink down to the filthy concrete as a cold shiver overtook him. After several long rings, Hwoarang started to feel…nervous….eyes holding the name that greeted him like a flash of silver lightning. Lee Chaolan. "Come on…Pick up…"

(Chapter Break)

"Come on…pick up." The words in native Korean echoed as the Silver Devil drew the ear piece of his hands-free cell phone to his ear. With a snicker, he recognized the sound of Hwoarang's voice, the delicious twinge of pain that registered through vibrating vocal chords.

"You have lasted longer than I expected, Hwoarang." Lee purred, shifting upward slightly on the bed, his naked skin covered over with cool silk…gathered like a splash of blue water over his torso.

"I need…what you have," Hwoarang barely managed, his breath heavy into Chaolan's ear piece. "It's starting...to hurt."

"Is that so?" the Silver Devil purred, raising the plastic stem of the long, bushy feather he had been enjoying this early morning. Beside him a beautiful socialite lay on her stomach, her backside perfectly red from a continued paddling. But this, was far more exciting. With a slow motion, Chaolan let the soft feather drip against his well defined chest, tickling the skin pleasantly before allowing it to draw further down to his torso. "Where are you now?"

"Three blocks from the hotel….the first alley on the right…" Hwoarang wanted to bite back his words but the pain was slowly spreading through him like fire.

"An alley? How decadently cliché…so filthy and yet so film noir," Lee chuckled, licking his lips slowly as the youth suffered on the other end. "I trust you are in too much agony to drive…?"

"Fuck you!" the Blood Talon hissed, thickening the roughness of his voice.

"Soon enough, Hwoarang. I will send you a car…but only this once. Consider it the last charitable act you will find this day." With that, Lee clicked the end button on the phone, removing his ear piece. Looking over to the beautiful, barely legal debutante in his bed, the Silver Devil let his gaze return to the rosy hue of dawn breaking above him from the skylights. It was time for the real games to begin.

(Chapter Break)

The car pulled up to the curb - the exact location given by the Blood Talon - within a half of the hour since the phone call ended. Hwoarang felt his heavy eyes try desperately to refocus, his body spasming as he attempted to move…one hand braced to the filthy concrete in an attempt to avoid his own sickness, evident on the ground…mixed with blood and bile.

The sensations had gotten worse since his nearly pleading call to Chaolan and now, it felt like the worst come down the Korean had ever faced through out all his experimentation. Never had he felt so sick…never had he lost the con(tents of his stomach in a congealing pool on an uptown Tokyo street.

The driver drew out of the sleek black limousine, stepping before Hwoarang and offering the junkie a hand upward. At first, the Korean fought it, swearing in native speech and attempting to rise up…only to fall back down again. "I am sick…" he managed, finally accepting the assistance, his body shaking…though it was far from cold on this humid summer morning.

"I have been instructed. Come with me. I am Dono Chaolan's personal chauffer," the female driver said, hoisting the Korean up against her with impressive strength and balance. Hwoarang wrapped his arms around his leather clad shoulders…and slowly staggered to the door that waited open for his entrance. There had never been a pain that humbled the Korean so…and now, making the pain stop…was his only focus…and Chaolan his only answer.

(Chapter Break)

Lee opened the door as the driver walked with Hwoarang, escorting the shivering Korean youth into the warmth of the Silver Devil's personal loft. With a narrow look back into the darkness Lee smiled, connecting to the phantom that lingered the hall…enjoying every delicious visual the shivering Blood Talon gave off.

"Thank you, Kim. I can handle him from here. I will notify you when it is time to return my guest to the hotel," Lee said, drawing Hwoarang into the confines of his minimalist loft, the scent of vanilla and lavender giving away the sweet air of intoxication Chaolan could feel as the first battle of the war played itself out right before his eyes. Sweet instant gratification.

As the driver left, Hwoarang fell into one of the ample couches near the door. Blood shot sienna eyes fell on Chaolan like an angel of saving grace. "I need…his blood," the Korean managed as he leaned over his knees, fighting the waves of nausea that threatened to overtake him once more.

"In due time. First, we must attend to the payment," Lee purred, drawing a snifter of cognac just beneath his nose, scenting the nearly almond flavor of the vintage year. "You realize, of course, I have no need of your money. Dishonest blood money as it is." _Blood Money. How apropos. _

"What...do you want then?" Hwoarang grimaced, no longer able to draw up the façade to play his poker face off. He knew…he just did not want to admit he could fall so far from grace.

"Your body," Lee said, matter-of-factly. "More importantly, your pain." The Silver Devil sipped, licking his lips of the excellent bouquet. "I have a certain adoration of willing masochism. You could say that makes me a sadist, but that is not entirely the truth. I suppose you can understand my meanings…you yourself have played your roles with Jin, have you not?"

"How do you…have his blood…if he is dead?" Hwoarang hissed, wincing with the pain of indignation…and the pain of his body. "What...do you get...out of this?"

"Something for nothing, Hwoarang? Is that what you are thinking?" Lee chuckled, setting his snifter down and walking to the mantle to remove an oval gilded mirror…careful not to spill a single drop of the pale yellow substance that rode the reflection. Cocaine. A beautiful prelude to what was undoubtedly proving to be a superior morning.

Lee set the mirror down and licked the edge of his pinky nail before forming the powder into a set of perfect lines. Tapping the pocket of his leather trousers, the Silver Devil withdrew a firmly rolled yen note…worth more than what Hwoarang could imagine he had ever seen for such a purpose. "I have his blood because of the sample I received when he was young, to study the devil gene. I have been able to make a synthesis of it…something I am sure you would not have the education to understand." Lies. All lies. Though once Chaolan had met Jin in his youth and taken a sample of the young scions blood, all of the information had been used to regenerate and rebirth Kazuya…nearly 20 years ago. What Hwoarang was reacting to, with pain and sickness, was the introduction of a more powerful devil gene…from the host of original evil.

"And as for what I am 'getting out of this', to paraphrase you…let's just say, I have a desire for all things…beautiful. Writhing in pain, the stench of sick all over you…you, Hwoarang, are still beautiful…" Lee leaned down, taking a line to his right nostril, his head falling back amidst the silver shocks of liquid metal that gave him the long ago street name…Silver Devil. Once more, a lie…but unlike the previous, it was not entirely false. The Blood Talon was a rare gem of beauty…

"Care for a hit? Ease the pain?" Chaolan smiled, handing over the rolled yen to Hwoarang as he offered the mirror.

The Blood Talon had been known to dabble from time to time in the powder, but that had been long ago and never again since then. Now, however, it was the most viable choice to prepare him for what was to come. Accepting the rolled up denomination, Hwoarang took the line deep into his body, biting his slowly numbing tongue to prevent the screams he wanted to issue as he moved. Leaving the bill beside the offered mirror.

"Now, do you understand what payment I desire for my services?" Chaolan snickered, withdrawing the mirror to replace on the mantle as he sucked back breath, just to taste the lovely chemical drip that numbed his throat.

Everything inside the Blood Talon wanted to scream and fight, and yet the pain was just too great. Was this going to be his life, his eternity for loving the Japanese youth that was only half human? "Yes…"

"And you understand everything that continues forward from this point is…consensual?" Lee raised a well defined brow, regaining his snifter of cognac.

"What the fuck more do you want from me, Chaolan, blood?" Hwoarang hissed, grimacing once more.

"In so much, yes. A blood test will be required to track the devil gene. I am something of a scientist. So, shall we begin?" Lee purred, setting the snifter down after a long swallow. He walked over to the chaise, opening a small black bag he had left on the surface in preparation for Hwoarang's arrival.

The Blood Talon said nothing as Lee withdrew the rubber banding, two small packets of alcohol swipes and two self capping syringes…one unfilled, the other red and thick with blood.

"Now, this will only sting for a moment," Lee smiled, drawing down to where the Blood Talon nestled, cramped over in pain on the couch. Breaking open the first sealed envelope, the Silver Devil let the cold sterility of the alcohol swipe draw against the Korean's arm as he placed the unfilled syringe against his lips. Tying off the muscular upper bicep of the youths arm, Lee's fingers tapped against the inside of the elbow…watching the heavy vein rise to the surface…

In a quick motion, Lee pressed the needle into Hwoarang's skin, eliciting a heavy hiss from the Korean's mouth. Pulling the plunger back with his thumb, the Silver Devil gathered a deep red swath of blood before withdrawing and using his forefinger to self cap the needle. Placing the filled syringe down on the glass coffee table, Lee withdrew the rubber banding.

"Fucking come on. I am in pain…" the Korean youth hissed as Lee held his arm flat against his knee, previous puncture exposed.

"Lets not get impatient, Hwoarang. This is, after all, what you have agreed to. That is quite the difference between treasure and trash…the ability to stand on your word, with little to no complaints," Lee snickered, breaking open another alcohol swipe…pressing it against the youth's tender flesh. "Our agreement begins now, Hwoarang. Mark and remember your consent."

Hwoarang grimaced as he tightened his fingers into a fist. Every cell in his body screamed to fight against this, to renege on the agreement and throw himself into oncoming traffic just to stop the pain. Never had he subjugated himself…never would he allow the notion of surviving off of another…and now, he had become the parasite he always feared… "Just…don't kiss me…I don't want you to…"

"As you wish. I think I can concede to that single demand." Seeing the inner turmoil in the Korean youth's eyes, Lee licked his lips slowly, drawing the blood filled needle into his fingers. He paused a moment, rolling the congealed syringe between his palms at a rapid pace, warming the contents as the gel liquefied within the plastic.

Uncapping the needle with his thumb, Lee aimed the sterile metal edge of the syringe into the vein he had just punctured. The Korean youth shivered, closing his eyes tightly as the Silver Devil released the plunger with trained excellence…sending the tainted blood of the original demon deep into Hwoarang's system…..


	8. Breaking Down the Metal

Chapter Six

Breaking down the Metal

"_Disgrace him," Kazuya had said to the Silver Devil before the Blood Talon's arrival, the embers of dark, malicious fire raging beneath one nearly black, one glowing red eye. "Disgrace his body that Jin will never want of his skin again…"_

Hwoarang faced the wall, his body tied at the wrists against the light grey paint scheme, thin rivulets of blood running down along a writhing naked spine, staining pale Korean flesh into the inviting cleft of his body.

Lee took a heavy draught of powder to his left nostril, the bullwhip warm and dangling in his right hand, leaning against the leather of his trousers. Licking his lips of the chemical taste, the Silver Devil raised his refilled snifter of cognac, letting the dual sensations battle down his throat. Naked from the hips upward, Lee admired his consensual victim…letting his now free hand run down against his bound and heavy length.

"His mark will not help you, Hwoarang," the Silver Devil purred, raising the whip for another heavy, skin penetrating lash. Almond eyes lingered on the feather tattoo between the blades of the Korean youth's shoulders, precisely where the bullwhip's cutting tip aimed, slashing viciously across the ink as Hwoarang cried out in such intense, exquisite pain.

The Blood Talon let his head bow down, pressing to the gray wall as the rich agony burned into his skin. "I love him...and only him…" he hissed in defiance, even as the pain nestled into his skin with almost welcoming heat. The blood injected into his body had made him feel hot euphoria, though it was another that dealt him such punishment…the only one he would take pain and transmit to pleasure for. In his mind, every unholy slice of the whip against his skin, every previous paddle to his naked body…had come from Jin…and only Jin.

"Your mouth speaks one thing…and yet your hard cock…another. You enjoy the pain…I smell it…leather and musk mingled like wine on my tongue." The Blood Talon had taken a significant amount of torment, as witnessed in heavy leather painted criss-crosses against his back…languid lovely stains of lust and pain riddled like a constant need…burned into flesh. "Such beauty in devotion…such beauty in submission."

Lee dropped the whip from his hand, licking his lips slowly. Drawing into the Blood Talon, the Silver Devil devoured the body of his victim with warm, wanton hands. "I am going to fuck you now…now that the pain has settled heavy into your skin…."

Chaolan was at the edge of his ability to tether his lust. Unbuckling his leather pants, he grasped the heat of his need with coning fingers…thrusting the sticky sweet desire from base to tip. "I will have you…as Jin has had you…nothing but skin as the pretext to our joining. Did he not fuck you thus?"

"I hate you…" Hwoarang hissed helplessly, though his body was eager and ready to receive, to copulate with pain and the pressure he desired. Amber eyes lowered tight…_Jin. Think only...of Jin…._

Hwoarang cried out deliciously as the Silver Devil thrust to the hilt inside of him…hands shaking and fisting against the leathers that bound him upward and helpless. The material twisted with his motion… as the Korean youth pressed himself back into Chaolan's dark attentions, covering the Silver Devil in the blood from his torn back.

"So delicious…so beautiful. How you wrap around me…like velvet," Lee groaned, his fingers falling against the youths hips, drawing Hwoarang to him, as the Blood Talon thrust back to receive more. There was no lubrication, no preparation…only pain and agony…only dark heat brought to a pitch through nearly an hour of the paddle and whip…of pure, unadulterated pain.

"Fuck!" Hwoarang hissed as he bit against his lip, filled to the edge of sanity with the Silver Devil's thick, aching length. Such pain, such perfect agony made the Blood Talon writhe…sated the dark of his spirit as his body succumbed to pain and the guilt for that need, created by blood and desire for the dark abuse from hands that did not belong to Jin. Only the Japanese youth could have…should have touched him this way….and yet, wantonness for punishment let the skin of another torture him.

Lee pressed himself deep, a hard thrust that pushed Hwoarang into the wall, only to have his captive break like the tide against him. "You are heaven…" Lee lifted one hand, painting the Korean's spine in the blood at his fingertips. He could hear the heavy breathing not far in the distance, the pleasure of his adopted brother…his lover….stroking to perfect attention at every well placed thrust.

"You are a treasure, Hwoarang...my treasure made of trash…my plaything to devour…never to be set free…" Lee groaned as he pressed deep into the Korean youth's core, feeling the hot milking reflex choking on his thrust. "Call out to him! I want to hear the sound of his name on your lips…scream...and beg his forgiveness!"

Hwoarang groaned in agony, fingers trying to rip at the leather bounds that held him, as the Silver Devil devoured him…from the inside. Every thrust made him shiver, every hard motion pushed his desire further from the reality of what was happening. Panting breath leaked out past his lips as his mouth formed the words. "Jin…Jin…Forgive me…I love you…forgive me…"

"Harder!" Lee groaned in the heat of the Korean's pain, leaning back to send his thrust with spiraling desire deep into the Blood Talon's shivering body. "Call to him!"

Hwoarang bucked forward, his crown leaking slick as the pressure of Chaolan's body fed into him, giving him every desire and every pain. "Jin!" he cried out, head hanging low between the bonds as he felt Lee press into the depth of his skin, relentless in pursuit of his buried heat. The moment the spark ignited, Hwoarang was like a firestorm, arching and pressuring back and forward like a spoiled bitch in heat. "I'm…going to cum…" the roar became a whimper…

"Replace his name with mine, bitch…Let me hear it from your lips…before I fuck my cum into your mouth…and make you swallow," the Silver Devil threatened, already so close to the edge.

"J…Lee…please…" The pain was too much, the sweet ecstasy of agony was drawing the Korean to the edge of his sanity. A heavy pull on his jaw drew the Blood Talon away from his own bliss…

"Receive me!" Chaolan hissed, spilling himself into the perfect firm vessel of Hwoarang's mouth, overcome by the heat of his name from the Korean youth's lips. With gasping breath, Lee pressed himself deeper…as though imprinting his seed into the Blood Talon's very skin.

Within a single flash of pain and pleasure, the Korean youth swallowed and released himself in ribbons, spilling seed over the floor beneath his feet. With a groan of agony and ecstasy, the Blood Talon felt his body loosen…felt the weight of leather dig into his skin… as the salty taste made its way down his throat…

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang stepped out of the sleek black limousine, trench coat catching the slight mid-afternoon breeze as he moved. There was no end to how deep the rabbit hole of his filth would go…and even now the soreness of his body was a horror to sense.

Ling Xiaoyu stepped outside the hotel, looking down at a pink manicured nail, scratched by a door she had not been paying attention too. Looking up, she could see the copper tendrils of the Korean youth, stepping out of a car far too expensive for almost any to afford.

"Hwoarang?" she asked, though her words were meant solely for herself. The Korean moved with soreness, his body stiff as he stepped onto the curb…face darkened at the cheeks…one eye appearing blackened as though the he had gotten into a vicious fight. But what fight would end in a limo ride back to the hotel, leaving the Blood Talon looking like hell had worked him over?

Shielding her face, Ling looked over her shoulder as Hwoarang walked into the hotel, passing her as though she was but a phantom somewhere outside his vision. "What happened to you?" she bit her lip, turning back to watch the favoring stagger the Korean used as he moved deeper into the confines of the lobby, toward the elevator.

Deciding to forsake her morning breakfast with Julia, Ling drew back into the hotel lobby. "Can I have Julia Chang's room?" she asked the attendants who serviced the counter, though her eyes never left Hwoarang's motion into the closing elevator. Unsure why, Ling knew the Korean needed her…and that meant more than eggs and toast in some American style restaurant…

(Chaptter Break)

"Enjoyable enough for your senses, Kazuya?" Lee asked as he wiped a towel against his freshly washed hair. His eyes beheld his adopted brother with a sense of innate fulfillment.

"The show was enjoyable enough, Chaolan," the younger Mishima snickered, crossing his legs as he sat upon the couch, enjoying the very seat Hwoarang had rested upon as Lee drew the Korean's blood earlier.

"Such a wondrous homophobe and yet, you longed to watch the boy's breaking. Sometimes you are an anomaly to even me," Lee huffed, nestling into the depth of his lavender terrycloth robe.

"Jin has become a whore to Korean blood…the bed mate of a street rat. Even I chose to spill my seed in places of greater virtue," Kazuya hissed, pursing his lips as his eyes beheld Chaolan's firm thighs, left visible from the heaviness of water soaked terrycloth robe.

"How you thrill me with your…intellect and greater sensibilities," Lee huffed, rolling his eyes as he raked his fingers through molten silver tendrils of whet mane.

"My son, unlike me...chooses to allow himself to be taken like a common prostitute by such lower-class blood. To spill the seed, in his case, is far less a crime than to receive it," the younger Mishima hissed once more, licking his lips slowly as the robe fell away, showing the curve of Chaolan's lithe, spread hip.

"Is that your reasoning for watching the Korean youth's pain…for enjoying it…stroking yourself to pitch because of it?" Lee tossed the spent towel to the floor, raising his pack of cigarettes to release a single cylinder. Tapping it against his palm, the Silver Devil lifted the lighter, in a flick he sparked the nicotine to life.

"One of many reasoning's. Unlike him, you know your place…do you not, Chaolan?" Kazuya hated the nicotine taint of the air he breathed, his reddened eye narrowed as the Silver Devil inhaled.

"I know that Japanese blood, superior as you tell me it is…still yields to the taste of Korean flesh. Flesh like my own," Lee snickered, even as Kazuya adjusted his place upon the couch.

"You have never tasted more of the flesh than I give you…a thrust here…a scream of pain there…you do not ride into my skin the way Jin has accepted pain and pleasure with a lower life form," Kazuya hissed, his hand reaching out to firmly grasp the Silver Devil's thigh.

"Hungry again, Kazuya…my dear sweet brother..." Lee tormented, licking his lips of the nicotine taint.

"Adopted brother, Chaolan. You are my infection, your body ready to receive the cure," Kazuya hissed, his hand pressing Lee back into the warm, welcome wealth of the couch…

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang entered the room, back kicking the door closed behind him. With a resounding hiss, the Korean fell backward against the sealed portal, his body tensing as the pressure connected to his shorn flesh, making him writhe in pure agony.

"FUCK!" the Blood Talon growled, arching his whip lacerated skin into the steel door again and again…punishing himself with the agony created as the pressure pulsed between painted metal and the material of his shirt and Jin's leather jacket. The pain was excruciating…dark…mindful of just what the Korean had become.

"How could you do this to me, Jin?" Hwoarang cried out, his fingers fisting into coppery tendrils, pulling on the follicles till the skin beneath lifted…his eyes rimmed with glittering tears as the pain finally became too much. The Blood Talon lunged forward with heaving shoulders, arching into a side kick that sent his boots and spurs deep into the wall that bordered into the bathroom. Jin…did not do this intentionally...the Japanese youth had pleaded his fear of the effects…but the Korean just would not listen...drawn to tainted flesh, tainted blood like the parasite Ling had once accused him of being.

A heavy crack from the busted in drywall slithered like chord up along the paint and plaster, stopping only when it met the ceiling. With a dark sneer, Hwoarang withdrew his deadly leg from the scene of the crime and screamed with the fury of a wounded animal. "What am I becoming, Jin! Fucking answer me! What is happening to me!"

The words were open ended as the Korean lurched forward…leather clad arms reaching out to push the television from its perched stand on the end of an ornate dresser. The set crashed to the ground, breaking out the screen as circuits toppled forward as though spilling its guts onto dark, modern carpet.

"WHY?" the Blood Talon cried out again, ripping the jacket from his body and tossing it onto the bed, kicking the chair that sat before a vanity clear out of his way. Raising his hand, fingers curled toward his palm…Hwoarang levied a hammer strike into the tabletop vanity, splintering the beautiful furniture down the center with a force made of Ki…mixed with dueling demon blood from inside of him.

With a cold hiss, fire rimmed sienna eyes narrowed, he grasped the lamp that sat opposite of where the television had rested…and with a heavy throw to the opposite wall above the bed head the ceramic smashed into pieces…the hot charge of Ozone filling his nostrils. Ozone. The smell of Jin's fatal lightning…the same electricity that burned into his forearms leaving black smoke trails where the current ate at his flesh. The Korean swore another whiff of that aroma…and he would lose his sanity for the rest of his life.

The window. With a sudden surge of strength, Hwoarang closed the distance between the panes and himself…hand curling back into a fist at his hip…twisting outward as his knuckles broke through to daylight…through the glass itself.

"Fuck!" the Blood Talon cried out, shaking as he withdrew his right arm, shards imbedded into the area of self inflicted, bite tendered skin. The daylight itself burned him more than the agony of glass penetrating his skin like a lover bent on his pain.

Boots and spurs walked over the evidence, crunching on the glass that glistened like rain on the dark carpet. Falling down to his knees, the Korean turned fascinated eyes to the spikes that glittered like ice jutting out of his flesh. Every motion he made brought the smell of lust and blood to his senses…and never had Hwoarang felt so…dirty. A filth so deep, he could smell Chaolan all over his skin…and he wondered if he scrubbed himself, if that scent would ever leave his body…

Turning his gaze to the window, the Korean lifted a shard of glass from his knuckle…absently drawing the former intrusion to his lips to let his tongue taste the blood that dripped like an endless river from the sharp edge. What would it feel like…to leap forward and fly…to spread the wings he did not possess…and let the concrete end his pain? How far from grace he had fallen…how hopeless and out of control he had become…and the window itself became the symbol of freedom from the cage…if only he could rise and make himself leap forward…on faith and love…soon to be in Jin's arms, once more.

(Chapter Break)

Ling stood outside the door to Hwoarang's hotel room, her fingers pressed against her lips in disbelief. Every scream, every crash and splintering sound from the inside made the Chinese youth cringe…paralyzed with the force of the Blood Talon's sudden fury.

And then, there was only quiet. A sickening quiet preceded by the sound of splintering glass. Nothing could ever be so fearful as the fiery Korean…turned eerily silent. Making her decision then, Ling tossed her purse down on the ground, not caring as the contents spilled forward. Drawing her arms over her head and back again by the hips, she released a powerful blow that hit the handle off the electronic door….making the metal dangle like a broken arm.

Lifting her leg in a fierce kick, her pink low heel sling back shoes broke the door open quickly, now that the lock itself was defunct. What met her scanning eyes made the Chinese youth shiver…

The interior of the room was demolished, broken glass and splintered wood littering the dark carpet like debris from a tsunami washed up on some pristine shore line. Hwoarang was kneeling in the center of broken glass before the window facing south, the smell of blood heavy in the air like the remnant of bleach on clean floors.

Blinking rapidly, Ling walked deeper into the room…watching the Korean youth withdraw a shard of glass from his arm…bringing the edge to his mouth as an eager tongue reached out to lap at the blood on its tip. "Hwoarang?" she whispered fearfully…not even her hasty and loud entrance had roused the Blood Talon from his quiet.

"Am I becoming like you, Jin?" the Blood Talon spoke in eerie whispers, tossing away the shard he had licked clean of blood, only to lift another, plucking the glass from his skin like a needle from a cushion. "Am I becoming like you, Jin?"

The repetition of the Korean's words made Ling shiver with fear. "Hwoarang. Hwoarang, it's me…Ling…?" The Chinese youth drew closer, her voice kept low and calm, even if she could feel herself shaking as she came upon the Korean's back…the material of his form fitting tee-shirt clinging to his spine, littered with trails of blood…rivers of dark patches that linked together as Hwoarang's muscular spine quivered.

The Blood Talon repeated his words to Jin as Ling softly pressed her fingers against his shoulder…drawing herself around his body slowly, the crunch of glass barely making far away eyes blink. "Hwoarang?"

Still no response. Ling stood with her back to the window, watching as the Korean tossed away another piece of licked glass…fingers plucking a new glittering shard toward his mouth. Hwoarang's lips were cut and bleeding…some shades of red against his lips darker than the others…and Ling could only believe it was the blood he drank from the glass that covered over his mouth like demented cosmetics. Never had the Chinese youth seen anything as frightening as this…as though the Korean…had lost his mind…

Ling's hand reached out to take Hwoarang's bloodied fingertips, pausing the motion of glass to mouth. That roused the Korean's attentions and he lurched upward, trying to grasp at the Chinese youth's throat…pressing her to back up, toward the window.

Ling's fingers wound around Hwoarang's hands, fighting back against the attempt. Her balance was waning as bloody glass slid under her foot and she screamed out with pure, unadulterated fear. "Hwoarang…don't do this…I...loved Jin too…"

The Korean paused as a blink finally came over his eyes, fingers slackening slightly as Ling made headway. With a push she shoved the Blood Talon backward, drawing herself to a crouch to prevent losing her balance and going out of the fifth story window.

Hwoarang fell back, just outside the reach of the glass, his head tilting to the side slightly as recognition returned to his features. "You did...you loved him too…" Tears formed at the rim of the Korean's haunted eyes, glass imbedded hand raising up to wrap around the opposite shoulder, as though attempting to warm himself from the breeze that filtered into the room.

"What is happening to you, Hwoarang…" Ling shuddered a breath. The shock of the moment was over and now the tattered pieces that littered around her made her body spasm and release the pain she could feel, in the form of her tears.

"Jin…Jin gave me his gift Ling…but I'm not worthy enough to have it. His gift…is going to kill me…I'm just not strong enough…just not strong like he was…" Hwoarang whispered as tears fell down from the rims of his eyes. "I...have to take a shower…I'm so dirty…"

It was obvious the Korean was not out of the dangerous trance yet, even as tears glittered like ice against his pale cheeks. Such sadness, such loss...such grieving. "I don't understand, Hwoarang…I don't understand this gift Jin gave you…You have to see a doctor, Hwoarang…your arm…is really bad…I'm going to call an ambulance…"

"The doctors won't find it…the gene is buried…like Jin…buried." Hwoarang glanced down at his shorn arm, though no recollection came over his features as to the urgency of his wounds.

"I don't understand you, Hwoarang…" Ling sobbed, raising her forearm to wipe her eyes and nose of the salty lamentation. "Your scaring me…please Hwoarang…you lost Jin...we lost Jin, don't make me lose you too…you're all I have to remember him by…"

Ling drew upward, careful not to slide on the glass…and fell on her knees beside Hwoarang. Dainty manicured nails, now red with blood, lifted the Korean's angular face…the dark blue and black mark on his right eye shining through like a badge of pain…and malice. "Hwoarang, listen to me…please…we have to get you treated…you're not well…"

That was the moment, the Blood Talon crumbled. The skin of his lips wrinkled as the first heavy sob broke past the rim of his mouth…letting out a tortured cry, echoed by the fury of his tears. Pain rained down from his eyes like sun kissed diamonds, ice melting beneath the returning fire of spring. "I miss him...so fucking much. If he was here…he would know what to do…know how to make it go away…If he was here…I wouldn't be this…but if he was here now…he wouldn't even know me anymore…"

Ling's heart broke as she grasped the Blood Talon into a shaking embrace, the fiery Korean melting against her body as he sobbed…his wracking cries and falling tears finally making him human…finally releasing his agony. "I…spent the night with Lee Chaolan, Ling….I let him use me…I let him abuse me…I'm so fucking sick, Ling. And he...is like my doctor…"

Ling let her tears fall into the black roots of the Korean's normally pristine dyed tendrils. She had no idea what was happening…what this gift was, what Hwoarang was babbling about…but she did understand that Hwoarang had allowed himself to be with another man…this Lee Chaolan…a name so familiar it scratched at the roof of her mouth. "Don't go back to him…we can find a real doctor…we can find you real help…together…"

"There is no one…to help me…He feeds the gift…I have to go back to him…" Hwoarang sucked back a breath, tasting the salt of his tears…but to him, every sense was overrun with Chaolan's seed down his throat, salty and malevolent. _So filthy…so dirty…._

Ling leaned down, grasping Hwoarang's pale, angular chin…drawing his face close to hers. "I will help you…." she nodded, tears glistening like snow against her pale flesh.

No one had ever spoken to him with such care, such genuine care. In a moment of pure fear, the Blood Talon raised his bloody fingers and pressed them to Ling's porcelain features. His lips took hers, brushing the velvet softness as the slick muscle of his tongue brushed to hers, feeling the Chinese beauty meld against him and return the sudden onslaught of passion….


	9. Fires of the Forge, Relit

Chapter Seven

Fires of the Forge, Relit.

Hwoarang's eyes went wide as he withdrew from Ling's warm, sweet mouth…the taste of her strawberry gloss tainting his senses. Shaking fingers released the Chinese beauty's features and in a shot, the Blood Talon was up on his feet…

"Hwoarang…." Ling said, her eyes equally wide with shock. She had no idea what had just come over them both…but the sensation was incredible, the taste of the Korean's mouth a mingle of bitter nicotine and sweet warmth. It was little wonder Jin could not keep away from the Blood Talon, with an expertise such as this.

Hwoarang turned, biting the nail of his right hand, not caring what glass imbedded shards remained like porcupine quills jutting out of his flesh. What had come over him? What had made him seek out the pretty mouth of the Chinese youth? "Ling…I am so sorry. Oh, god damn…I am so sorry. I don't know…what came over me?"

The Korean's words were half frantic as his chest heaved for breath. Grasping the black leather trench coat on the bed, the Blood Talon draped the material over his left, good arm…and turned toward the splintered door.

Ling rose up and grasped Hwoarang into an embrace, behind his back with her cheek pressed to the side of the sticky blood showing through his shirt. "Hwoarang wait. It's alright…it was just a kiss. It doesn't have to mean anything. Friends kiss, right? Sometimes?"

Fire rimmed sienna eyes lowered amidst a cavalcade of dark lashes, his body tensing as Ling pressed against him, her words trying so desperately to reassure him. "I understand what Jin meant now…the gift…and getting too close to me. My hands…were around your throat…and a minute later…I can't stop myself from kissing you. I understand it now…and I am so sorry, Ling."

The Chinese youth released the hold on Hwoarang's back, sidestepping through the rubble of the room to look the Korean in his strangely gleaming eyes. "I don't know what this gift is….that you keep talking about...but Jin isn't here…and I am your friend…even if you don't want me to be. You're in pain, Hwoarang I knew you wouldn't hurt me and I trust you. What just happened, it was just a kiss…something comforting…don't get crazy on me about this and let me help you."

The Blood Talon swallowed hard, mustering his most brusque tone. "I am sick, Ling…and I don't think anyone has ever been so nice to me before…but sticking around me is going to get you hurt…I'm bad news, midget…and the headlines ain't getting any better."

"I don't believe that…I think you need help!" Ling stood there, her words echoing on protest, "Don't you dare give up on yourself and don't you dare give up on Jin!" she continued, turning as the Blood Talon walked past her.

Without looking back, Hwoarang stopped in the hall. "I'm not giving up on him. I want to join him," he said coldly. If the Korean kept going this way, there was little doubt the curse he carried from Jin's blood…was going to kill him. Instead of fighting it, perhaps it was time to join forces with it.

Hwoarang was half way down the hall when Ling felt her heart break. The edge of her manicured nails slowly brushing against still burning lips. For a moment she could almost imagine herself as Jin, and what it must have felt like to be kissed with that kind of love and passion, the all consuming hunger of desire and lust on the receiving end from the fiery Korean. And that's when she knew that kiss was not meant for her…but for him….

"Jin." Ling looked around the room, her voice taking on life amidst the broken pieces of glass and furniture that littered the scene. "I don't know if you can hear me…but Hwoarang seems to think your listening…so let me give this a try."

The Chinese youth cleared her throat and let her almond eyes focus on the sunlight glittering outside the window. "Hwoarang needs help, Jin. And he needs it fast…I don't know what to do…please, Jin…help me to help him."

(Chapter Break)

Jin drew the hot cup of green tea to his lips, breath materializing as the chill wind whipped through his pea coat. The sun was bright and hot and the breeze that flowed from the water contradicted the sweet vitamin enrichment he felt. It had felt like ages since he truly looked out into the light.

The glassy waters glittered beneath the sun's radiation, mesmerizing and unforgiving as it yielded angrily to the wooden intrusion of the boat splitting foam waves. The Japanese youth let his eyes search the horizon for signs of land, still a full day away…the deck of the boat becoming the anchor of his shoreline, the anchor of his thoughts.

_Hwoarang needs help, Jin…_

The Japanese youth blinked rapidly, the salt spray making his eyes dry and unfocused. He swore he heard Ling's voice over his shoulder, just behind his back…and yet, there could be no way she would even know he was still alive. Not after the Honmaru…not after what the Devil spoke to him of Heihachi's own death …How could it be possible?

_//I felt our lover…days ago…and nothing since then. Ling Xiaoyu senses something amiss…and now I feel a surge in power from our father…Seek out Hwoarang…we will do so, together…//_

Jin felt his heart beat wildly as the Devil's voice filled him, its normally mocking and placid tone replaced by something more desperate. In the midst of this, somehow, the Chinese youth, Jin's only friend, reached through to his tortured spirit. If Ling's words were true…and not some demonic fabrication….then Seung was alive…and all thoughts of Kazuya's hand breaking the stroke of the Korean's mortal coil…

Eyes wide with sudden fear, Jin searched out over the water…using the salty currents around him like waders into meditation. Water had always been his element…comforting and forgiving, gentle and knowing. "Seung…where are you…"

Jin felt his chi ripple like the tides, arching as it joined with the Devil's consciousness. Searching so desperately…Jin turned nearly half way around and still…he could feel, nothing. No connection to his lover's spirit, to the Devil's blood within Hwoarang's body…there was nothing….

…but Ling.

The vision was as clear as a crystal basin filled with sparkling water. Ling was standing in a room…a room destroyed as sunlight reclaimed broken glass like glittering ephemeral souls desperate to find peace. Blood stained her cheek…and her eyes were rimmed with tears…lips red and kiss swollen. The sensation of Hwoarang was all around the Chinese youth…

_//He has been there until recent…they have shared an intimate moment…it resonates from her skin…a kiss…a kiss on her lips meant…for us…the blood on the girl's cheek…is his but it is not his…our father's imprint saturates the room…our lover's kiss…has made her afraid and wanton…and she calls out to help him. Do you see it, Jin?//_

In all the years the Devil had been a part of his spirit, never had the voice inside of him shivered with such fear. "Yes…" Jin whispered to keep his voice away from the other sailors that roamed the deck, performing the work that was needing to be done. The vision was broken…ending as the Japanese youth spoke, stumbling forward slightly as the draining of his energy swept like wind through his spirit.

"Why do you aid me…when every moment before this has been to thwart and torture me?" Jin reached a hand out to grasp the high side of the ship, free hand still holding the cooling green tea.

_//Kazuya's surge of power…will kill both of us…and though it is cloaked to me...our lover's hands…may be bloody with our death…we must find him…quickly…//_

"That doesn't make sense…he would never side with Kazuya!" Jin hissed.

_//Willingly, perhaps not. Our sire employs methods we have yet to fathom and our lover may be the plaything for it…a catalyst…//_

The genuine desperation in both the Demon's and Ling's voice…the vision of a room torn asunder and rife with blood…made Jin Kazama cringe. Where there should have been indignation at the thought of Hwoarang being intimate with another…there was only fear and anxiety. "How am I able to hear her?"

_//It was she who made first contact…to us...brought on by the kiss…she feels it was meant for us and not for her mouth…she understands more than she knows…//_

"We fly at midnight, at the change of watch upon the deck…gather your strength…I won't have much of my own after the change comes," Jin said with decisive strength as the demons words filled him. Rising up from his leaning position against the side of the boat, the Japanese youth drew in a deep breath. He would have precious little time to prepare himself for the agony he would have to endure…once the Devil overtook him…but every moment would have to be something made…accountable if only to find his lover...

(Chapter Break)

"I notified the downstairs lobby about the state of the room, told him Hwoarang was not there…and that I was on my way to see him when the door was hanging off the hinge. I don't like having to lie…but what else could I do." Ling sat in the small café outside of the main eatery, chopsticks moving food around the plate. "Hwoarang is in serious trouble…I don't know what to do…" she said softly, turning her dark eyes up to meet Steve's with almost secret knowledge, as Julia took a bite of her vegetarian late lunch.

"Fucked if I know how to help the poor bastard," Steve snickered, even as azure eyes connected to Ling's. The Chinese youth knew of his past with the Korean…even if the past had become another mistake of reality. The boxer could not bring himself to speak of his darker desires before Julia…unknowing of just how she might view him if the truth should ever be told.

"Sounds unfortunate…to have lost his lover in this way…and then be grieving so hard he is self destructing. There really isn't a way to help him…" the American cleared her throat of the garlic flavor, lifting her nearly empty glass as eyes looked around for a waiter to refill her drink. "…unless it's through professional help…or a spiritual exorcism. I don't know the rotes, but I am sure if I contact my mother, she would." Julia recalled Hwoarang and the brief time she had spent in utter fascination with him. Who could not find the Korean captivating…? "I will make that call, if you think he would accept it."

"I think anything your mother could offer to us, if her tribe permits, would be more than I could ask for. But I don't know if Hwoarang would go for it…" Ling said softly, finishing her drink, even as Julia looked around for a waiter.

"You know him better than I, with your friendship to Jin and all. Spirits rest his soul," the adopted Chinese American sighed softly, brushing her hand along the topaz bracelet she wore on her right wrist. "Even Steve knows Hwoarang better than I, they were once close friends, but that was years ago. So, figure out what you need me to do and I will make the best of what I can offer." With that, Julia rose, taking both her glass and Ling's in her hands. "Be right back, let me go get these refilled."

"Alright," Ling said softly, still pushing her late lunch around on the plate with bamboo sticks.

The moment Julia was out of earshot Steve leaned in, his azure eyes holding Ling's dark depths. "Julia doesn't know we have a past…and I want to keep it that way. Now, tell me what you saw?"

Ling looked into the window of the café proper before returning her gaze to Steve. "He was…possessed or something. The room was destroyed like I said…but what I didn't tell you before is that…there was a window he broke out…and the glass was in his arm, sticking out all sick and bloody…and he just kept plucking the shards…and licking them clean…" the Chinese youth shivered softly. "He keeps talking about this gift Jin gave him…but I don't know what he means…and the last thing he said to me, after he kissed me…which was amazing…and a whole other story…is that basically, he wants to join Jin…I am guessing in death. What do you know about the two of them, together?"

Steve breathed out heavily, narrowing his eyes to process the information. "Nothing more than you, I reckon. I know they have a strong bond…but from what Hwoarang has told me, there were these times when Jin would get into a mood…and Hwoarang would start feeling sick…it was making him worried about contracting something…you know like Syphilis or whatever, even though Jin was, yanno, a virgin. But the last time he had seen a doctor, he was healthy…but that was when he was in the military…before he went AWOL."

The British Boxer looked back into the window, watching Julia finally getting the two drinks refilled. "I think Jin did something to him…but I don't really know what the guy could have done...Hwoarang is no push over. He used to keep this black feather with him, all of the time. He even got the thing tattooed on his back, between the shoulder blades, when he was on leave in the United Kingdom, said it reminded him of Jin. I swore it meant something else. Have you seen it?"

"No," Ling said, biting the edge of her lip. "What does this all mean?"

"I'm fucked if I know. But keep me posted. Take my cell phone number and make sure you let me know what's going on. I really do care about Hwoarang…would almost say I loved him...if Julia hadn't changed my life. So, let's just keep this between you and me, alright?" Steve reached into his pocket and withdrew a pen, uncapping it with his teeth as he took up a napkin. Always the clever student at Oxford, he never went anywhere unprepared. "You have to wonder to yourself, what kind of situation is happening…if Jin is dead and then alive again, only to be dead once more. Something just isn't right."

The jotted numbers slid toward Ling, who instantly folded the material over, even as Julia returned to the table, setting the two drinks down. "So, did we make a decision?"

Ling cleared her throat, lowering the folded napkin with Steve's number into her lap…and then into the pocket of her Capri style jeans. "No, Steve was just telling me about the last time he saw Hwoarang at the last tournament. I guess I am just not sure of where all of this comes from." It was the cleverest cover the Chinese youth could think of as she avoided Steve's eyes.

"Well, it sounds to me like his spirit is the ailment…his grief needs to be expressed and released…" Julia said, placing her hand softly on Steve's upper thigh. "Anything we can do, Ling…Steve and I are there. Right babe?"

"Of course. Anything at all…" Steve said softly, his hand falling over Julia's, enjoying the warmth of her grip. Next to Hwoarang, there was no one who could make him stir so much, with just a touch.

"I will make sure to remember that." Ling sighed softly, turning her eyes to the street, just paces away.

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang stepped into the apartment haunted by his memories of Jin. Taking a deep breath, he closed the door behind him and flipped on the light to illuminate the growing darkness of the outside, tossing Jin's jacket onto the counter in the kitchen. That was when he saw the duffel and the guitar, sitting just a few paces away from where the portal had opened. "Hello?"

"I'm in here," Chang's pained voice called back from the living room. "Where the hell have you been…and why don't you answer my messages!"

The Blood Talon walked around from the kitchen into the living room, where Chang sat on the couch, tipped back against it, in pain.

"I'm sorry…I had something I had to do…I was going to come over and see you tonight…" It was a poor excuse. In his madness, the last thought the Korean had was of his blood brother…and that was wrong. Tapping the side pocket of overly tight jeans, Hwoarang felt the cellphone there, amidst the blood stains on denim.

"What is going on here, Seung," Chang asked calmly as his eyes held Hwoarang's. The gang leader looked as though he had been through hell…paler than before, his eyes haunted and dark, the outline beneath one indicating a black and blue…the stench of blood all around him….and an arm bandaged with blood soaking through the wrap.

"I punched through some glass…it broke the skin…I field dressed it after I pulled out all of the shards. Guess I am lucky I didn't severe a nerve, right?" the Korean drew into the living room, lifting a cigarette from the pack in the opposite pocket. "Are you okay?"

"Okay? Been fucking worried sick about you. Do San is on his way from Korea tonight, he will be in come morning…to find you and to fight in the tournament," Chang hissed defensively. "Look, you need to tell me exactly what is going on here, Seung. Lies won't cut it anymore…I don't care how bad it is…or what you have done…but I need some answers. If you can't trust me, who the fuck can you trust?"

The Blood Talon cringed, taking in a deep pull of menthol. "Chang…I can't tell you about this…I just can't. It's not that I don't trust you, I'd lay my life down to save yours and you know that…but this…I can't get you involved in this."

Chang drew up, using the cane heavily till his feet connected flat to the floor. "I took more than a bullet for you, Seung. I watched a man turn into a devil…that afternoon at the den…I tried to defend the recruits…but I couldn't do it alone…I didn't have your strength or your training. You fucking owe me an explanation," his words were hissed, dark with concern and indignation.

Hwoarang recalled that moment he walked into the den, strewn with blood and bodies…Chang calling out to him like a spirit to a medium. Never could he forget that moment where the weight of the world and all its responsibilities, fell on his shoulders. "Jin Kazama…you know is Kazuya Mishima's son, right? Well, Jin has the Devil in him too, Chang. And now, so do I."

Chang did not look the least bit phased, almost to the point of disbelief in the Gang leader's words. "That's not possible."

"It is possible," Hwoarang exhaled once more, his eyes holding his blood brothers. "Jin and I…we used to get a little rough. Well, a lot rough. We liked it that way, lots of pain with that pleasure…the more the better…" the Korean snickered, closing his eyes for a long moment. "I…liked the way his blood tasted. It was cute enough in the beginning…but I started to crave it…started to tear his skin open just to get a little…"

Chang visibly blanched now, his hand coming up to his lips. "Seung…"

"It was getting pretty violent at the end…lots of teeth and skin…his blood was like fucking fire…but what we didn't know then…is the blood held the devil gene…and the devil gene is inside of me now. Jin ain't here no more...so I have to deal with this on my own." Hwoarang breathed in smoke, flicking the ashes onto the wood floor beneath him, crushing out the embers with his boot.

"How do you know…that you have it?" Chang asked, shaking as the pieces of the puzzle started to fall together.

"Cause I am getting Jin's blood from someone…he says I've got the gene in me…he started to track the progress of it in my system…and it's driving me fucking crazy, Chang. I can't eat, can't sleep….can't control myself…all I can do is take the blood and get sick…it makes me so fucking sick…I feel it right now…the pain is coming back…and I swear, I'm fucking dying."

"Holy shit, Seung." Of all the explanations Hwoarang could have cooked up, he would never have guessed this would be the one. And in that simple fact, Chang already knew there was truth. "What do we do now? How do we get rid of it?"

"I don't think you can get rid of it," the Blood Talon realized there was an ashtray not far from Chang, on the end table beside the couch. Walking toward it, the reverb of his spurs and boots echoing…he crushed the cylinder and looked to his blood brother. "And even if we could…I don't know if I want to. Maybe Jin's waiting for me in hell, maybe the pain will end…if I meet him there."

"Don't you dare fucking talk like that! What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you give up everything just to sink into the ground?" Chang had never, in all his years, heard Hwoarang speak this way before.

"Because I would rather spend one day with him in hell, then live without him," Hwoarang said, with pure and honest conviction. "Well, now you know the story…and I don't want a word of it going to Baek, you here me, Chang? I mean not a fucking word!" Just the idea of Do San knowing any of this, made the Blood Talon want to break something.

"We have to find you some help, there has to be a Mudang somewhere in Japan, right? There has to be a way to get this shit out of you!" Chang hissed, still disbelieving…but not about the story Seung told. He was in disbelief his best friend would give up without so much as a fight.

"I don't want this shit out of me, Chang. Don't you understand that. It's Jin inside of me…a part of him is a part of me. I'm not exactly sprouting wings over here, but he's still in me…and I want him there…for now. Just to keep me going, until I can't take it anymore." He breathed deeply. "You know, I saw his wings once…they were black like night…long, real long…and so beautiful..." The Blood Talon slid down onto the sofa, running his fingers through filthy copper tendrils as he closed his eyes. "I have one of them, in my duffel…real soft to the touch. I wonder what a handful of them must have felt like…"

"That's why you have that tattoo, isn't it?" Chang asked, hobbling to the opposite side of Hwoarang on the couch, letting himself fall backward as the cane swept upward to his side.

"Yeah…I didn't know it then, but it felt important when I found that feather, two and a half years ago on the floor at the old den. Makes sense to me now…makes me wonder what those things would have felt like, wrapped around me in the middle of the night…like some black cocoon…"

Chang rested his hand against the Blood Talon's knee. "Only you…could stir shit between two different worlds, Seung," he sighed heavily, closing his eyes as the information washed over him, overfilling his banks with the realm of the impossible…and demonic. "Just don't go leaving me, alright? We will find a way to work this out, as long as you don't start howling at the moon…."

(Chapter Break)

Jin walked the deck of the ship fitfully as the sliver of moon rose high in the sky. Every creak of the bow crashing into waves made him turn…eyes searching the darkness to be sure no one was moving around in the blackness that could bear witness to what was coming.

"Are you ready?" The Japanese youth asked, slowly stripping away his pea coat and tossing it to the floor. With shaking fingers, Jin removed his stolen zippered sweat suit jacket and tied it around his waist…not to get ruined by the transformation soon to come.

_//I am ready. We must fly fast to ensure we have not lost too much time…//_

"I need you to get us to a place I can sleep, somewhere safe and unseen…I am going to be out of it for awhile…The change over…takes everything I have. Do you understand me?" Jin asked into the darkness, feeling the cold wind blow off the waters and onto his naked upper body.

_//We work in tandem this night, and for however many more after it. I will assure the safety you require to rebuild as I sleep…//_

Was it always this easy to communicate his needs to the demon…or just now, when the entity was shaken with some unknown fear? If Kazuya was growing as strong as the Devil within feared, perhaps the spirit worried he it would be absorbed and lose it's singular consciousness…or perhaps it was true death that concerned the creature…the death of his host and the death of his own unattached spirit. "Alright, demon. I am ready."

A wracking sensation filled the Japanese youth…as though his skin was being shorn clean of his muscles…a heavy hiss of pain leaving already pressed lips. Falling to his knees, Jin clutched his hands over his neck as fingers clenched for the skin of his shoulders.

The hot tear of flesh made the Japanese youth bite back a scream that would have alerted the others below deck. His firm body rocked forward till both hands had to be placed on the deck, just to steady himself from the agony. Claws slowly pressed forward as Jin felt the heavy ache of his mouth and elongating fangs cut through the pain of his back….either side of his head suddenly afire as blood dripped down angular cheeks.

Black wings unfolded from the primordial mixture of blood and demon deep within Kazama Jin's body…jutting outward like the legs of a newborn foal. Slowly, the black feathers emerged and elongated…dripping blood onto the wood deck he so desperately clung to.

The break of spiral horns made its way from either side of Jin's forehead…as dark eyes gave way to moonlit molten mercury…the mark of the Devil's possession….

With a sudden shot upward, Jin spread his arms outward, back arching as black wings extended entirely, the lowest ebon feathers dripping against the wood. With a banshee cry into the night, the Devil took its control…sending the heavy body upward with the slightest flap of wings, aching for flight…


	10. The Sweat of the Sword Maker

Chapter Eight

The Sweat of the Sword Maker Glistens like Steel

Jinpachi Mishima walked between the worlds, his spirit a fleeting thing as incorporeal bare feet connected to ether and earth. The pulse of darkness shifted in his veins as the tip of his tongue leapt out to taste the bindings of his ethereal cage…to the world he could influence but not step fully into.

"The son is dead…and the son of the son rises up…and the blood of his blood…has returned. I will find freedom…I will find power…at the desolation of their bodies…so soon to crumble to the demons awaiting below….my freedom from imprisonment...will rise…as they fall!"

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang parked his bike, one hand wrapping around his stomach as the other swung his keys into the pocket of his buckled jeans. Freshly showered and forced to eat something as Chang watched, the Blood Talon fought off sickness as hard as he could...though the pain was creeping up on him as every hour passed. The phone call came to Chaolan somewhere after Chang left…midnight, the witching hour…and the Silver Devil was ready to accept his company.

Drawing up the stairs to the penthouse loft, the Korean hissed his breath, fighting waves of nausea as he moved. Every step was pain…every motion…agony. Finally making it to the top, Hwoarang let fingerless gloves connect to a solid wood frame.

"You're running late," Chaolan said, parting the portal as he slid back, a glass of cognac in his grip. His blue silk robe was tied at the waist, exposing black leather trousers beneath…a cool smirk riding his lips to match the silk along his skin.

"Took the stairs. Don't want to be seen," the Korean hissed as he stepped in slowly, eyes nearly clenched at the agony writhing through his skin. He drew onto the couch he had sat in the night before, freshly washed copper tendrils clinging to the leather. "Something is wrong with me…It didn't feel this way…when I drank his blood."

_Perceptive little bitch,_ Chaolan hissed in his thoughts, his mind working like gears of a machine to find a decent explanation. "You are receiving a potent dose rather than ingesting and digesting it through your bloodstream. It's bound to make the effects significantly pronounced…" Lee closed the door, taking a heavy draught of his libation, though his eyes never left the Blood Talon. "Are you ready for your blood draw?"

The Korean youth looked up with painful eyes, the fire rim along the edges of sienna burned like a hearth's glow. "My arm already looks like it belongs to a fucking Junkie, Chaolan…why are you doing this?"

"We have already covered that, haven't we, Hwoarang?" Lee snickered, opening the black case kept in the same location as last evening. He set his cognac snifter down and withdrew the necessary implements once more. "Though I must say, your eye is healing quite well from last evenings…punishment. I believe the Demon's blood is changing you over…at last."

"I don't want to fuck you…" the Blood Talon hissed, his energy drained from the long climb of the stairs…his words truthful as the guilt of last evenings indiscretions washed over him.

"Correction. It is I, who does the fucking. Don't you recall our agreement? If you do not give to me what I desire, then I can not give to you…what it is you need to survive." Lee placed the alcohol wipes, rubber band and two syringes once more on the coffee table.

"I could do something else for you…I could rough some people up…bring in troops from Korea. I just…" Hwoarang closed his eyes, letting free a groan of agony as Lee sat down beside him.

"You just what? Had some guilt about your dead lover? You could equally join him if you wish, though this gift was asked of me to deliver to you…you would not disgrace Jin…would you?" The Silver Devil tore open the first alcohol pad, holding it aloft as his eyes turned to the tortured Hwoarang's. To love and believe that person lost…was painful…a pain almost delicious to Chaolan's curved ear.

"No…I would not disgrace him," Hwoarang said as a pang of agony wove just beneath his skin. _Jin, is this what you wanted from me? Is this how you intend to keep me closer to you, even in death? Do you want me to be strong for this gift? I will…baby. I promise, I will._

"Are we continuing?" Lee asked as he breathed heavily out of his nose. "I have other appointments to attend to than your…addictions, you realize. Certainly more important than the poor payment I receive from my attentions. Are you in, as last evening, or are we done for the night?" He feigned impatience.

"We are continuing…" the Korean youth hissed, offering his right arm to Chaolan's knee. The bandages that wound around the flesh went from wrist to the bend of the elbow…but the vein was still accessible.

"Have you hurt yourself in his name, Hwoarang?" Lee licked his lips, imagining whatever agony had brought the Korean youth to injury. Such delightful pain, such perfect guilt…the idea made him crave to feel that skin burn beneath him.

"I hurt myself...to ask forgiveness." Hwoarang winced as the rubber band cut off circulation to his arm….the prick of the needle strong into his skin, draining out life force to test the progression of the Devil Gene inside of him. _It's Jin's gift. He bore it for years…and he gave it to me…I have to show I can take it…the same way I took every punch, every kick and block…in the back alleys of Korea…years ago. I have to take it…for him…_

Lee snickered and withdrew the blue rubber banding around Hwoarang's arm with a heavy snap. "How delicious of you to try and seek penance in the memory of your dead lover. It borders on debauchery."

The Silver Devil drew up to retrieve his already powder lined mirror, offering the pre-rolled yen and contents to the Blood Talon, setting it before him. "Take two lines, Hwoarang. Tonight…is going to be far more difficult to bear than the last…and the syringe you need is waiting…"

Leaning up slowly, the Korean youth drew the rolled up yen to his nostril…leaning in to the offered mirror set before him before taking a line deep into each nostril. With a heavy hiss, the chemical drip rolled down his throat, numbing the sensations as Lee added more powder to the reflective surface.

With sharp nails, Chaolan drew the next set of lines, taking the yen from the youth's fingers before inhaling thickly with a slow moan. Smiling with implied lasciviousness, the elder Korean raised the blood filled syringe…and rolled it heavily between his palms. The friction created in the motion…warmed the blood about to be injected into Hwoarang's willing skin….

(Chapter Break)

Jin opened his eyes slowly, the dark sky was still intense enough to his regained senses that he could barely cope. Japanese soil brushed his naked torso and the shiver made his spine wince enough that he forced his hands to move…and draw over him the borrowed sweat suit jacket that had been tied loosely to his waist.

The Demon was eerily quiet as Jin tried his best to gather his bearing. Trees. Black figures of breathing brilliance amidst the night…somewhere, he rested in a forest area that was as dark as it was beautiful. Safe as it was foreboding.

Every last storage of energy had gone from his body and his spirit as he closed his eyes. "Almost to you, Seung. Hold on, just a little longer…wherever you are….I will come for you…"

Falling into the slumber of pure exhaustion, Jin went into a place where even the demon could not touch him…to the depths of heaven where he offered himself to the night and to his ancestors…if only to protect Hwoarang just one more hour...one more day, until he was free of the soul draining effects of the Demon's flight. Words of the Japanese youth's fathomless dreams formed inside his mouth…as the waving leaves of summer trees fell against his lips, like a matron's accepting kiss.

"Mother…protect him...he is my mate…and the son you have yet to love…"

(Chapter Break)

"Come on, just wait a little longer. Hwoarang is never one to miss a good party." Ling shivered as a cool breeze wafted through her skin, brought by the tides not far away, or so she believed.

"Did you even invite him out tonight to this club opening?" Julia asked, warming her hands against her nearly bare shoulders.

"Well, I did tell him about it…" Ling said defensively.

"There shouldn't be a need to invite Hwoarang, trust me. The extravagance alone should have brought him by now. Can't bloody wait outside all night…the breath from the piers are fuckin' cold, no matter how warm it's supposed to be." Steve shivered, tossing the menthol he had captured between his fingers to the ground.

"I hate the fact that you smoke," Julia shrugged, stepping on the burning end with her trail boots. "You know this will kill you."

"Going to die of the frigid temperature either way love, how can it be the dawn of summer and yet so bloody cold? Let's go inside and warm ourselves with drink. If Hwoarang is going to show, he won't be out here for long. Korea isn't nearly this cold," Steve grimaced, turning to open the door and shield himself form the chill breeze. "Bloody Japanese weather."

"You both go inside. I am going to wait a little while longer, just incase. This club has been advertised all over Japan, it's opening night. If that doesn't attract his attentions, I just don't know what will." Ling held her hands against her upper arms in the already skimpy outfit she wore.

"We will order you a drink. Don't wait too long, alright? I mean, it is possible he had more important things to do?" Julia said, leaving her last comment open ended as she followed to the door Steve held open.

"I will be in soon enough. Don't worry about me, alright?" Ling said, her tone enthusiastic, even if her spirit possessed none of it. Julia joined her boyfriend and the door closed quickly behind them, pushed by the breeze.

"Hwoarang. Where are you?" Ling asked, searching out along the water…and in that moment…a strange feeling…of pain and tiredness...the kind of tiredness that comes from the soul itself, washed over her. Blinking her eyes rapidly, the Chinese youth let her back lean against the outer wall of the club beside the downtown Tokyo pier. "I don't think I feel so well…" Ling grimaced, clearing her throat. "Come on Hwoarang…what's gotten into you? Please don't be with that guy…be here...with me...instead."

(Chapter Break)

"Fuck!" The Blood Talon cried out as the bamboo was repeatedly levied against his skin repeatedly. "Hurts….." the Korean youth hissed, face down on the bed…tied with leather at the wrists and ankles…open and at the mercy of his tormenter. The sensation was so complete, so dark…so like his last nights with Jin. _Jin…._

"Deliciously so," Lee groaned, licking his lips as bated breath passed the velvet softness at the delicious slap of stem against skin. The wounds that opened seeped exquisite blood against the Korean youth's pleading flesh. "Surely you do not yield yet?"

"No…" Hwoarang cried out, his fingers gripping into the icy bed sheets he was bound against. The splintered ends of strong bamboo recalled to his thoughts the Juk-Bi…the ceremonial instrument that beat against his palm till bloody, in the moments he begged for clarity after learning Jin's secrets. Pleasure and pain battled once more beneath his skin as all thoughts made his dead lover real...made Jin live and breath again…

_Almost to you, Seung. Hold on, just a little longer…wherever you are….I will come for you…_

"I'm here baby…Jin, don't leave me!" Hwoarang cried out with hissed breath, tears at the rim of his eyes. He could hear the words of his lover buried in the back of his thoughts as though the Japanese youth whispered them with warm breath against his ear…and that simple imagined connection was enough to drive him into madness…and into the arms of blackness.

"Jin is not here, Hwoarang…there is only payment owed to me!" Lee purred, as the Korean youth stilled his previous struggles, fingers drawn outward to an incorporeal lover at the edge of the bed….fire rimmed sienna utterly blank as Chaolan inspected his captive lover thoroughly…only to realize the Korean youth was no longer conscious.

"Well, this certainly complicates the session," Lee snickered. Hwoarang was breathing deeply, sweat and blood glistening from his abused back. The sudden instinct overcame the Silver Devil that the Japanese scion was close and had spoken directly into the Korean youth's mind. Perhaps Jin had returned, sensing his lover's pain? Perhaps the blood heir to demonic strength was finally near to the source of the matter…and Kazuya's revenge? And at last, Chaolan wondered if the connection between the Japanese youth and his Korean lover…was deeper than the devil gene, the infection they now shared.

Leaning down to the end table beside the bed, Lee lifted the cordless phone and dialed familiar numbers. "You may wish to join me at the loft. It seems we have a problem with our lab rat."

(Chapter Break)

Kazuya braced his leather trench coat over his arm as Chaolan closed the door behind him. "What have you done to him and why was I not notified he would be here at this late hour?"

"Do you wish a personal invite to each and every session I hold?" Lee huffed, taking a sip of the cognac from the snifter in his grip. "Hwoarang has lost consciousness…."

"By your inability to properly dominate him, undoubtedly. Your skills leave much to be desired, or so I have witnessed," Kazuya interrupted Chaolan's sentiment as he rested his jacket down on the arm of the sofa. "Drugs are not a requirement for sex, Chaolan. The sooner you learn it, the better the control on your whipping hand will be."

"You misunderstand the nature of things, Kazuya. Always hasty to find an explanation." Lee pursed his lips, walking past Kazuya to lift the mirror of fine, pale yellow powdered lines that rested on the surface…careful not to disturb a grain as he set the paraphernalia on the mantle. "Hwoarang, it seems, has heard the voice of your son."

Kazuya arched a brow as he withdrew his sunglasses, a necessary apparatus to hide the glowing red of his demonic eye day or night. "And you know this how?"

Lee tightened his silk robe about his waist, the material dangling against the leather of his pants. "He replied to a voice that was not present as though speaking to Jin himself. A moment later, he was unconscious. I doubt highly that his pain tolerance is so low he could not take a proper caning…unless of course you would have rather I not called you?"

Kazuya took a deep, impatient breath. Turning from Chaolan, he walked through the loft toward the bedroom and opened the door into the large expanse. Hwoarang was lying, prone and exposed…face down on the bed and bound with leather restraints to wrists and ankles. "How long has he been unconscious?"

Lee followed, snifter in hand. "Forty-five minutes. I have tried to rouse him but nothing has seemed to work. His pulse is strong, respirations steady…but he does not rouse."

Kazuya drew up along the bed, eyes scanning appraisingly down the Korean youth's naked flesh. Age and innocence were still clinging to Hwoarang's open sienna eyes. The youth was not yet even in his prime and yet for that partial and hidden purity, there was a jaded sense that seeped through the street punk's very pores. If he had not been Korean, Kazuya would have thought the youth almost beautiful.

"Has he had a second injection?" Dark eyes turned to Chaolan, as Kazuya walked along to the other side of the bed, inspecting the Korean youth closely for the already visible track marks on the right outstretched arm.

"An hour and a half ago, perhaps two," Lee said as he leaned back against the wall, crossing his ankles and lighting up a cigarette. "It is difficult to keep track of time when something so lovely is writhing in pain and pleasure on your bed."

Kazuya ignored the comment and trailed his eyes along the dark stains of blood that leaked like spilled ink against the white canvas of Korean flesh. "And there was no difference from the first and second injection? No reactions out of the ordinary?"

"Nothing that would denote a problem." Lee flicked the ash into the receptacle near the door, a lovely standing sculpture of ceramic meant to cloak the actual use of the piece. The Silver Devil blinked rapidly when he felt the staunch chill of unnatural energy fill the room, a sign of the Devil's presence growing. "What do you sense?"

Kazuya's gleaming red eye scanned Hwoarang's skin once more before a clawed hand reached out over the Korean's body…absorbing the energy the unconscious Blood Talon released, perceptible only to darker senses.

_//The blood is being consumed, the gene attempting to battle against a stronger adversary. If Jin has spoken to his spirit, the initial infection would seem to have awakened.//_

Kazuya lowered his clawed hand and turned his eyes to Chaolan. "Jin is near. Near enough to him now to have awoken whatever hold the gene held upon him before our interference. Hwoarang will need more if we are to overpower his blood. His ties to Kazama Jin are strong…but not unbreakable."

Lee exhaled sharply, unnerved as that glittering red eye fell on him. "You want me to transfuse him? Kazuya that is madness! The boy can barely handle what he receives in doses….the simple fact that neither you or Jin are the same blood type as he is…and his ability to digest it, shows just how fragile the process is. Too much and his own blood will attack itself…it could very well kill him."

"You already knew this to be reality, Lee. You knew the sickness would get increasingly worse and not just from the devil gene but from the altering of his blood type….And from his state, I see it has indeed progressed. We need to speed that progression further." Kazuya gave a dark smile as he straightened his suit jacket. "Hwoarang's life has been nothing but bait in the trap. His death, surely you realize, was a rather fortunate inevitability?"

For the first time since the inception of this plan, Lee Chaolan was doubting just how far he could go. Loyal to Kazuya after abandoning his adopted brother to aid Heihachi's plans…by now, he had surely paid his penance. "I cannot be a part of that, Kazuya. His death will not be on my hands."

"His blood already is on your hands…as mine had once been. To whom do you owe loyalty, Chaolan? If you think to turn your back on me now, everything you love, everything you hold sacred…will burn…all around you," Kazuya hissed as he drew toward Lee, his clawed nails bracing under the Silver Devil's chin, forcing almond eyes to meet the darkness of his own…eyes like black tides rippling against a forbidden shore till Chaolan could no longer see his own reflection. "If you fail me now, I will rip your heart from its tender ribcage…with my very nails."

(Chapter Break)

Ling turned as the door to the back entrance of the club swung open, catching her off guard. Her hand braced to her throat as she breathed in the deep, cold air that rose from the pier. "Steve. You scared me! Don't you dare do that again!" Without another word, the Chinese youth punched the boxer resoundingly in the upper arm.

"Sorry," Steve laughed, rubbing the spot Ling had hit, through his red leather jacket, the blue piping moving with his hand. "Still no sign, eh?"

"Nothing. I really thought he might show up. Something just keeps telling me to check…" Ling gave a soft sigh as Steve tried to light his cigarette. The Chinese youth cupped her hands over the large paws of the Boxer's, helping to shield that flame.

"Thanks." Steve inhaled sharply, tilting his head back as the cold wind slid through previously sweat drenched platinum tendrils. The warmth in the club, from the heat of both bodies and strobes, was a far cry from the world out of doors. "You know Ling, I think it's honorable of you to not give up on him. Hwoarang can be a bit of a git sometimes…"

"I'm not the only one who isn't giving up on him or you would have had that cigarette inside," Ling smiled. "He has a good friend in you. And you have a good girl in Julia. I think you made the right choice."

"Well, the choice was already made soon as Jin stepped back into the picture. But you're right, ya know, Julia does make me happy," Steve said as he returned the smile. "After my smoke we have to get you inside or you'll end up catching your death out here. Bloody Japanese weather, can't make up its mind."

"It's only because we are near the water. It's always cold near the water…" Ling cleared her throat as the wind blew the menthol taste into her mouth.

Steve snickered and drew in another drag. "The water off the pier is dark enough that it just absorbs everything, including your reflection...could drive you crazy staring too long into it. Black water is like the end of the world."

"Come on, let's get back inside before you wax philosophical, again. I don't think I have had enough to drink to handle another line." Ling rolled her eyes with a laugh, her hand reaching the iron grip of the door and held it aloft as the Boxer finished his cigarette.

(Chapter Break)

Lee Chaolan breathed deep as he finished dressing Hwoarang on the bed. The Korean youth had been washed clean to remove the evidence as Kazuya sipped a snifter of Cognac in the living room.

Never had the Silver Devil truly believed Kazuya would go this far. Hwoarang was meant to be the bait, a possible ally brought forcefully to the Original Devil's side to rally against Jin. Death…was never a factor in Chaolan's designs, careful to administer only a certain amount of blood through the syringe as not to endanger the Korean youth to this point. Hwoarang was much like himself before the Silver Devil had become so jaded. Both drawn into the web of darkness so deep it sanctified the theory of hell and made it a reality.

Now, it was too late for Hwoarang, much as it had been for Lee so many years ago. Kazuya had fed the unconscious youth with his own fresh blood…taken from the wrist where the font was stronger after a large gash was made in the flesh. Chaolan had no experience with transfusion…and no equipment for such a procedure…and realizing this, Kazuya forced Lee to massage the throat muscles of the unconscious youth as he fed the mouth full of his blood. The volume of blood was too much…the change would be too drastic…unpredictable…

"He will live through this, Chaolan. Long enough to ensnare his lover and bait Jin into my grip." Kazuya spoke quietly, leaning in the doorway to the bedroom as the Silver Devil startled at the voice that should have been in the other room. Kazuya lifted the snifter of cognac to his lips as the tendons in his right arm screamed. The wound on his wrist was nearly healed from the incision, but the soreness was still evident. Even a Demon was not above pain.

The Silver Devil drew the unconscious Hwoarang upward from the bed, one hand holding around the Korean youth's waist, allowing the Blood Talon's arm to drape along his neck. "Where are we taking him?" Lee ignored Kazuya's words. "The hotel? Or his apartment? You know how to get to his place, right?"

"He needs to be somewhere he can be found and treated, kept alive. A place with a good deal of presence, perhaps?" Kazuya insinuated as he finished the cognac and walked back into the living room. Setting the glass down as he drew his coat up along his arms.

"Club Dominion." Lee said, keeping Hwoarang braced to his hip. _Someone would have to recognize him there…it's his crowd, his scene…his age group._

"The club you invested a ridiculous sum of yen into? Truly, Chaolan, you are a sad old man longing for childhood," Kazuya sneered and grasped the unconscious Korean from the Silver Devil's hold. With a show of strength, the Middle Aged Mishima drew Hwoarang over his shoulder as though bracing a sack of potatoes. "Was this street rat worth missing your own opening?"

"Yes…and no," Chaolan hissed, drawing on his own aviator leather jacket, hand tailored to his body. Taking his keys into hand, he opened the door for Kazuya and his cargo.

Kazuya turned to scan the Silver Devil's almond eyes. "Be careful, Chaolan. I fear you might be growing attached to our subject. I would hate to think of the guilt you will feel at the moment of his expiration and the part you have played in its arrival."

"I know where my loyalties lie, Kazuya. It will be light soon. Let's go." Lee breathed out deeply, locking the door to his loft as he steeled his resolve. _What was done, is done. I can't change it now…not for Hwoarang…and not for myself._


	11. The Sins of the Steel

Chapter Nine

The Sins of the Steel are the Sins of the Sword Maker

Jin opened his eyes just before sunrise, the sounds of the woods in the center of Tokyo coming alive. It could not have been more than two hours since the Devil landed his body in safety, shrouded by trees and earth, in the dark of night.

The Japanese youth forced himself to roll over in the dirt, his eyes cast up to the trees and sky beyond, slowly turning from midnight obsidian to a softer hue of blue. His body was sore and the cool damp earth felt incredible against his bare shoulders and spine, calming the burning heat that raged in the housing of the Devil's wings beneath his skin. Nothing of the flight was coded in Jin's memory, only the simple knowledge he had not slept nearly enough to restore his energy completely…but that could not matter to him now…

Taking a deep breath, Jin focused his strength to make his body respond…to sit upright as his hands grasped bent knees, pulling himself further into position. All of his senses were fuzzy and his stomach muscles quivered he forced himself to ground into the earth, using it as a solid base to support himself. Raising one hand from his knee, Jin slid his fingers through his hair, trying to wake himself up…as heavy lidded eyes closed softly.

"Where are you, Seung?" the Japanese youth groaned, his thoughts slowly shaking off the fog as he imagined where the Blood Talon would be, on this day, at this hour. Any number of places could be a point of interest…but if Seung was in trouble, as both he and the demon feared, that complicated things even further.

With a slow, deliberate motion, Jin drew to his knees…and gently upward from there. Unwrapping the sweat suit jacket he had tied around his waist before the Demon's flight, the Japanese youth carefully replaced the material about his naked upper body; releasing black feathers stuck to his shoulders with dried blood. The obsidian remnants slowly flitted to the earth itself, rippling like black water against a dirt carpet.

Taking his first unsteady steps, Jin breathed in deeply. "Help me, Seung…help me find you…."

(Chapter Break)

Ling shielded her eyes as she stepped out of the club, bracing her hand against Steve's upper arm to guide her unsteady gait. "I think that last drink…just hit me," she groaned, blinking rapidly as the bands of night yielded to a slowly rising light. Soon enough, the sun and moon would be parallel to each other in the sky…and their eternal battle would end with morning's first rays.

"For a small thing, you can definitely prove yourself at a bar," Steve snickered, his right hand entwined with Julia's as his left came around to support Ling by the waist. "Don't these clubs ever bloody close? The party is still raging inside."

"I think the hours on the flyer said 5p-5a…that could get a lot of people in trouble," Julia shook her head, the most sober of the trio. There was little desire in her to drink herself stupid, a level head and level spirit were her most valuable assets.

"I think this place is a success. We have to come back here again, soon," Ling giggled, taking careful steps to keep in stride with Steve and Julia. "What time is it?"

"Well, I don't think this place would be a good idea for either you or I, when the tournament kicks off on Monday." Steve was craving a cigarette, but with both hands busy, he was forced to forgo the idea for the moment.

"It's almost 5a…quarter off, far as I can see," Julia replied, turning her gaze up from the watch Steve wore on his right wrist. Without indicators at every five minutes on the face, it was difficult in low light to tell the exact time.

"Wow, I really need some sleep." Ling giggled again, nearly losing her footing and luckily braced by the Boxer's strong yet gentle grip.

"I think that goes for all of us. It's a shame Hwoarang didn't show. I hope he is alright…wherever he is." Julia sighed softly. "He's going to have to show up for the kick off celebration, his track record for that is pretty secure. I think we can do some intervention then."

"Hwoarang doesn't do interventions," Steve said, second handedly. "But Julia can be the ace in the hole for us…she has some great empathic abilities…very earth mother. I guess we can thank your Mum, Michelle for teaching you that."

"Given a few minutes with him, I might be able to ask the Great Spirits for some insight. But he's going to have to let me do that…I can't just tap in without his okay. Free will and all that."

"Jin,"….a soft voice echoed in the distance, so gentle and tortured only Ling, closest to the alley a few hundred yards from the club, could hear it. Steve and Julia were speaking amongst themselves…

"Hey, did you hear something?" Ling asked, stopping and nearly tumbling over as Steve's arm pushed her forward and lost its grip against her narrow waist.

The Brit turned and looked to Ling. Pausing for a single moment, he strained to hear anything out of the ordinary. "No…I don't hear anything. Why? What's wrong?"

Ling bit the edge of her lip. "Hang on a second, alright? I thought I heard something coming from the alley over there. Let me go check it out."

"You're not sober enough," Julia cautioned. "I'll give a look in. Someone might need help."

"It could be some homeless bum or a junkie or something. Let me do a quick sweep and see if there is anything there." Steve released Julia's hand, but not before drawing her skin to his lips and leaving a gentle kiss along the bridge of her knuckles. Even with two very accomplished fighters at his side, he still had to assert his masculinity.

"Yeah…that's fine and all…but what if it's Hwoarang…." Ling said, getting her hopes up that it would be the elusive Korean. She had seen what the Blood Talon was like after his night with the man he had spoken of during his massive freak out. With a shot of alcohol based courage in her system, she was confident she could handle Hwoarang better this time, if it was in fact him. "He won't really want anything to do with you. Am I right? And he sure as hell won't come near Julia…he doesn't really know her all that well."

"Why wouldn't he come to Steve? They are pretty good friends…" Julia asked, looking between the two, confused.

"I...well, he owes me some cash and I was harping on him about it the last time I saw him. Money is a sore spot between friends…can create a pretty serious rift," Steve chuckled, his eyes going to Ling with silent pleading.

"Why would you even think it's him, anyway, Ling?" Julia quirked a brow, exhaling deeply into the slowly warming chill of morning.

"I don't think it's him…but what if it was? I'm sure it's not the first time he has ever woken up in an alleyway, right?" Ling said, losing her patience. "Just let me take a look."

"Alright. But we will both be right here, okay?" Steve finally conceded. Ling was right, Hwoarang might not let anyone get close, if it was really him. The Korean's defenses would be up, especially if something was really wrong, wrong in all the ways Ling had described earlier in the day at the café.

Ling nodded and walked toward the dark alley, her hand bracing against the slick, saline coated walls…as she grimaced. Solidified, corrosive salt water sticking against dense stone was not a pretty sensation against manicured nails.

"Gross." Ling shivered…and tried to find a point of light in the alley, something to reference the secrets contained within.

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang rocked back and forth in the center of the dark alley, his hands wrapped around the knees that braced his chest…comforted only by the click of his spurs against wet sticky concrete. "Fucking hurts…so bad…" he whispered as though trying to sooth himself, afraid to scream out loud…afraid he was truly and completely alone.

The sickening stench of regurgitated blood, mixed with salt and garbage, made the Korean shake. There was nothing in his mouth but the taste of copper…a bitter taste, malevolent and consuming…as though the blood within him was eating through his most vital organs.

Death would have been a welcomed release from this all consuming agony. Every muscle was tender, each tendon strained. The Korean's heart beat erratically in his chest as his lungs heaved…forcing up another heavy throat of blood…this time, dripping down his lips to his already filthy shirt.

"Jin…I think I'm dying." Hwoarang continued to rock back and forth, using the grip on his knees to try and brace himself. How did he get here? What had happened to him? The last thing he could recall was…Chaolan…being tied to the Silver Devil's bed as bamboo splintered against his skin. And now, he was in a dingy alley, somewhere near water…but where, he could not tell. The Korean had no energy to stumble forward and gather his bearings. Fear and pain gripped him like restraining hands to this very position.

"I'm scared…" the Korean youth shivered, his blood caked lips trembling. Leaning forward, he pressed his head against his bent knees…the smells of the alley so pungent to his overrun, enhanced senses….he swore he would be sick again…if the pain hadn't taken precedence over his body like a black tidal wave.

"Please Jin…wrap your wings around me…and give me death…" Hwoarang called out with innocence to the incorporeal memory of the Japanese youth, sniffing back tears of agony.

(Chapter Break)

_//The scent of the other is strong. The original demon is near.//_ Came the fractured, strained voice inside Jin's head. The Devil Within had suddenly snapped to life as Jin walked downtown, toward the pier….crowds emerging from a gathering close by. Only a club could attract such an ostentatious, drink heavy crowd…but there had been no place of the such near to the run down district.

Grasping his head, Jin closed his eyes tightly, energy drained and waning fast as the Demon borrowed what little he had in reserve. "I am not strong enough…to fight Kazuya…not without rest…we must go…" the Japanese youth spoke out loud to himself, even as garishly dressed people walked past him, casting him side long glances. How he must have looked to them…a disheveled figure, stained and filthy…a derelict or homeless bum of the streets, speaking aloud to only himself.

_//It's too late for that. We must stand…gather…strike fast. He does not realize we are here…he does not acknowledge us…we will have the element of surprise…//_

Jin tightened his closed eyes as his fingers clenched into fists in his unruly obsidian tendrils. The Devil Within was right…if they ran now, Kazuya would taste that fear…and chase them down till there was no energy left for Jin to stand, let alone fight.

Dark eyes opened and focused as Jin steeled his resolve. He had come too far to fail now…the search for Seung would have to wait, just a little longer. "Alright," the Japanese youth whispered, breathing out with slow control, gathering what was left of his thinly stretched Chi. What energy he had left would have to suffice… "Do not…interfere…I can not support us both…"

The Devil remained eerily quiet, though Jin could feel the dark spirit watching from the back of his ocular cavities. Pulse quickening, the Japanese youth moved with determination to close into the distance.

_//The alley. There. To the right.//_

Jin exhaled sharply once more and turned, his eyes lingering against the dark corridor a few paces from where he stood. The concrete archway of the alley stunk of salt water and trash…so pungent it made bile rise in the back of his throat. Taking his first steps into the darkness, Jin hardened his jaw…

Spirals of red lightning swirled along his arms, illuminating the path as the reflection cast along the salt water slicked walls. He moved with purpose, abandoning fear as the ozone trail sparked around him…threatening to ignite the air itself…

The Japanese youth quickened his pace, not sure just how long the lightning would hold…his throat overflowing with the sickening smells he sucked in…mingled now with blood.

Movement in the center of the alleyway drew dark eyes and the flare of ancestral fatal lightning grew with the brilliance of sunrise just behind his stalking form. Red fingers of current licked up, highlighting a pale figure, curled in against itself…the shape was human…and it rocked, back and forth…melding into itself over and over again…making it nearly impossible to discern the figure….

…until sienna eyes turned up to the shudder of red lightning…wincing at the brilliance….

"Seung…." Jin's lips formed the name and as though whispering an incantation, the blaze of electric swirling current quickly dying.

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang felt the ozone charge in the depth of the alley, like a lightning storm threatening the earth and sky with its vengeance. Errant papers and strips of trash blew back past his curled form as the Korean shivered, rocking in continuous motion in the sudden charged windstorm.

Red flickering light shifted behind his closed eyes. Ever so slowly, the Blood Talon turned his head to the left, to the source of approaching current, resting his temple along his bent knee.

"Seung" Jin's voice filled the agonized Korean, like a guardian angel.

"You came…" Tears fell down dirt spattered cheeks as the vision unfolded before relieved eyes. "You came…to take me…" Hwoarang whispered, the lightning swirl of Jin's body fading, leaving behind sparks of ozone that threatened to ignite stagnant air.

Never could there be a sight more beautiful to deliver him to death than the ghostly apparition of Jin…his angel of mercy…now, his angel of death. The pain could end now, the spirit of his lover was with him, ready to enfold him in black wings.

Jin knelt down, reaching his hand out to the pale, shivering figure before him, his fingers connecting to cold, sticky flesh. The sun was rising on the other side of the alley, carefully shedding scant strips of light through the dark corridor. Blood. Blood stained the Korean's mouth…all the way down the clothing Hwoarang wore…and in a glossy disgorge beside a shaking, pale body.

"Seung…oh, god…Seung…" Jin felt his soul quiver as his fingers drew up into the tangled matting of once fiery copper tendrils. Tears fell along his lover's tormented features as watery sienna eyes beheld him like a vision of mercy.

Hwoarang let free a scream as Jin touched him…as though the simple brush of the Japanese youth's nearness tortured him. The original demon, bound within Korean flesh, rebelled just as sharply as the gene gifted to him by his lover. The initial gene fought to quench the uprising…its strength diminished greatly against stronger forces and yet, revitalized by Jin's nearness. The scream subsided and Hwoarang leaned gently into the Japanese youth's grip like an injured kitten, lost and abandoned…too weak to fend for itself.

_//He thinks you are death…come to take him…//_ the Devil spoke through Jin's thoughts, the normally mocking voice losing its sense of urgency and darkness in pure, complete shock. How could the Demon mistake Hwoarang…for Kazuya?

"I...don't want to be sick…anymore, Jin…take me away with you…to heaven or hell…please…don't leave me here alone…" Every word was broken with sobbing innocence as Hwoarang grasped his knees closer to his chest, afraid to reach out and touch the apparition of his salvation…scared it would dissipate and never find him again.

"Seung…" Jin felt his world crumbling as blood pumped hot and heavy through his ears. What was happening? "I won't leave you again…I promise you…"

_//He is sick…infected. He carries the curse…but something is wrong…something is horribly wrong…I feel his life force…is dying.//_ The Demons voice was fading, barely able to sustain itself on what little reserves the entity kept of its own.

"What have I done to you…" The pain made Jin's voice crack as he released his hand from Hwoarang's matted tresses. With a sudden upward motion, Jin grasped the cold, shaking Korean up to his feet…bracing his body weight as strong arms wrapped about his lover's back.

The Blood Talon groaned with the motion, his head falling on Jin's shoulder like a newborn, unable to perform even the simplest function on his own. The scent of his dead lover, the feel of familiar skin…it was all so real…Jin was so real.

"Help me, Devil. Drain me…and find the power to fly…we have to take him to safety…" Jin shuddered as his lips pressed against the black roots of the Korean's cascading hair, tasting his lover's scent beneath the overwhelming stench of sickness.

The first shake of pain wracked through Jin's shoulders as he clutched Hwoarang tightly to him. Every fiber of his body shuddered as he forced himself to remain upright.

Biting back a heavy scream, shielded by the liquid currents of the Korean youth's tendrils, Jin felt the first tear of flesh…the heavy torment of wings breaking through…unfolding and dripping like black blood to the very concrete of the alley.

"Hold onto me…Seung…" Jin gritted his teeth as the Devil's horns spiraled from the sides of his head…arching out like an ancient god, freed of a dark prison.

"I won't ever...let go…of you…" Hwoarang mumbled into the jacket that covered Jin's shoulder.

Black wings stretched wide and filled the expansive width of the alley with a crisp, sharp motion…the sound of feathers tearing against concrete echoing as clawed fingers held the Korean against him. With an agonizing cry, Jin lost himself to the demons consciousness…black wings enfolding Hwoarang like a protective cocoon.

"I…love you..." the Korean's tortured voice echoed as Jin slid back into the depths reserved for the demon, his spirit shivering as the potency overtook him. The knowledge Seung truly loved him, the sound of the words echoed from stone, gave the Japanese youth something to cling onto as he yielded to darker power.

Turning, the Devil drew their lover into a carry, one arm braced beneath Hwoarang's back, the other at the fold beneath his knees. The Korean's head tipped back as the wealth of unconsciousness surrounded him, no longer able to bear the agony snaking like fire beneath his skin.

"Let go of him!" came the heavy shriek of a woman's voice, vibrating against the concrete.

The Devil, waning in strength, barely glanced over its shoulder, pausing in a moment of recollection before breaking off into a run. _Ling Xiaoyu._

Drawing down to its haunches at the break of the alley into the street, black wings took to the air as the sun rose in brilliant red hue over Tokyo. Obsidian feathers created an upward driving current to support the extra weight carried like precious cargo in its grip.

The Demon flew into the blinding rays of sunlight itself, beating a pace like fast hands on a stretched drum. Battling exhaustion, the entity drew on every last spike of energy, soaring high and attempting to shield unwanted eyes from its very presence.

(Chapter Break)

Sparks of red drew Ling's eyes as she moved carefully down the long corridor. At first, it seemed like a reflection, a match perhaps, struck against the wall, turning the slick concrete a rich blood hue. But then, the Chinese youth realized, the red glow was moving into the very center of the pathway.

Shredded paper and small shards of trash blew within a sudden wind, created at the opposite end of the tunnel, where the sun was beginning to rise, nearly blinding the Chinese youth. With a heavy cough, Ling cleared her throat and cupped her hand over her brow…overflowing with a sudden, eerie thought…that Jin was near.

The red light dissipated just as quickly it arrived and Ling was plunged into darkness once more. Echoes of sound reached her ears, too inaudible to understand the muttering that washed over her. But it was only when the Chinese youth scented familiar ozone, wafting in a slow breeze down the enclosed alleyway, did she take to a run.

"Jin? Hwoarang? Anybody?" Ling whispered as she grasped the wall. The rising sun blinded her eyes, as the shape of a deformed man lingered like a shadow against the brilliant flares. Only when she strained did she realize, the shape was not that deformed at all…the figure was male by the outline…and it was cradling something in its arms….

..or someone. Someone with illuminated hair that burned like brilliant fire kissed copper against the sun's vanquishing rays. _Hwoarang. Who else could it be?_

"Let go of him!" Ling shrieked, the sound of her own voice echoing back to her as the shadow figure paused…before taking off at a running pace, directly into the rising sun's rays. The dark shape hunched down as yellow, orange and red ribbons leaked like water into the alley, blinding the Chinese youth instantly. By the time Ling could adjust her eyes to the caustic flare that reflected in the dingy, slick alley….there was no one there at all.

"Damn it!" Ling felt the surge of adrenaline through her body and she bolted toward the end of the alley, where the figure she had seen almost magically disappeared.

Holding onto the outer concrete, the Chinese youth scanned from left to right…and then up into the sky itself. There was nothing…but the release of nights torment to forgiving, yielding light. Nothing but the street out before her, still quiet on an early Saturday morning.

"I must be losing my mind," Ling groaned, brushing the back of her hand against her forehead. How much of a fool could she feel like? To think Hwoarang would be in this place…or that Jin would be alive and drawing breath. _Wishful thinking on both parts…it's a sad world I live in._

Taking a deep breath, the Chinese youth began the walk back through the enclosed alleyway, guided this time by sun light's beautiful fingers. Kicking her feet along the muck beneath her, Ling tried to think of an excuse she could give to Steve and Julia…maybe a homeless person after all? She just could not tolerate being looked at…like she was just a sad little girl trying to hold onto the friend she loved and lost…by saving his former boyfriend.

As these thoughts tormented her, Ling lost her footing, crashing down onto her knee in the center of the alley. "Ouch!" she hissed, bracing both hands down on the ground before her to begin hoisting herself up. "What the hell was that?"

The Chinese youth looked around to her right leg, she must have slipped on the dark and slick puddle beneath her foot. The wetness that held an awful stench that nearly reminded her of blood. Grimacing in disgust, Ling dragged her fingers upward, preparing to wipe them clean with her skirt, when a shimmer of light caught her attention.

Drawing her hand around toward the nearly iridescent glimmer, Ling grasped something sticky and yet soft. Squinting her eyes in the sharp light, the Chinese youth quirked her brow, as her lips fell agape.

"_I think Jin did something to him…but I don't really know what the guy could have done...Hwoarang is no push over. He used to keep this black feather with him, all of the time. He even got the thing tattooed on his back, between the shoulder blades when he was on leave in the United Kingdom, said it reminded him of Jin. I swore it meant something else. Have you seen it?"_

Ling felt the words Steve had spoken at the café earlier in the day wash through her. What were the odds of finding a black feather this large, here in an alley? The Chinese youth was not exactly sure what it meant…but it had to have been something. Something big. It had to be Hwoarang's.

Scanning around in available light, Ling followed the shimmering blackness that seemed to have fallen everywhere in the alley. Gathering them up into her fingers, every available one she could see, the Chinese youth took to a sudden and sobering run; back to her friends, and from the path she originally came.

(Authors Note: I want to thank everyone for the constant, motivating feedback. It really keeps me "up" when creativity is "down". We have begun to reach the areas that will require longer time for updates...things are about to get wild. hehehe. So, please bear with me during the possible 2+ week lag in updates.

Also, be on the look out for the first chapter of the significantly shorter "Dagger Series 1: Switch-Blade" which will be up VERY soon. If you are not sure of what the Dagger series will be about, please visit the Mishima Compound Website for all the updated info. And, while your there...take a peek at the intensely beautiful fan arts. Feedback is always welcome and thank you all...

M. Mishima

END AUTHORS NOTE)


	12. The Absolution of the Forge

Chapter Ten

The Absolution of the Forge

Kazuya Mishima slid back in the rich leather seat of his limo, brushing his fingers through thick black tendrils in order to sweep the wayward locks back into his normally severe style. With a deep breath, the heir to the empire ran his eyes along Chaolan, captivated by his labored breathing.

Lee pressed into the seat opposite of Kazuya, eyes closed as sweat-damp silver tendrils fell like mercury against leather. The tip of his tongue snaked out to wet the agonizing dryness of his lips as he drew up his hips to readjust his leather – unbuckled - trousers. "That was unexpected," he groaned, his back sore from straining in an odd position for too long. It had been awhile since he had taken a ride like this in a limo, and his neck was no longer used to the angle he was forced to hold lest his skull crack against the roof of the car.

"Consider it my gift to you, for a job well done," the Mishima snickered, clearing his throat. "It is the only gift an infectious bitch like you, can possibly understand."

"You flatter me," the Silver Devil exhaled sarcastically. Kazuya's words drained every last bit of afterglow from his normally voracious libido. "A thank you for helping you seal Hwoarang's fate? I hardly think something I receive for free, so often, is worthy of being labeled a gift."

"Ungrateful bitch?" Kazuya hissed, holding Chaolan's eyes with his own glasses-shielded gaze.

"You speak of this infection so often and yet, Kazuya, let us look at our lives from this moment to the first. It has never been I that pursued you…but rather you who sought after me, whether to fight or fuck. Rather than the infection, it would seem I am your cure." Lee slid his leather aviator style jacket on before brushing a hand back through his hair. Knocking his knuckles against the privacy glass of the Limo, Lee waited for the divider to slide down. "You can let me out here."

"Do not think to raise up that lowly Korean temper against me." Kazuya's voice was a warning. "You are only kept well and under control when it is I who hold your reins and suppress your more distasteful attributes. You should be groveling in thankfulness that I continue to inject you with Japanese superiority.

"Once upon a time, _Silver Devil," _the Mishima heir purred, "you were an orphaned street rat, hustling your body on the filthy shores of your own country. It was my father who gave you both education and respectability - low as your blood is - and how did you repay him for kindness? You fought the underground circuit, so like dear Hwoarang in that respect."

Lee narrowed his eyes, his lips pulling into a sneer. "And that is why you hate him so, isn't it, _dear adopted brother_? But which is more pressing I wonder? Is it that Hwoarang reminds you of me in our youth…or does it recall your own desires which you still deny, now reflected in your son's lust?"

Kazuya licked his lips slowly. How perfectly Chaolan had hit the mark and yet, he drew the façade deeper with a cold, malicious smile. "Where once you were a mere hustler by body and blood, you outdo yourself now, only to graduate to a murderer Chaolan. Not once but soon to be twice over," the Mishima heir hissed cruelly. "And the moment you're infected Korean brethren and new found lover dies, I will make sure the Interpol is given the information and evidence required to put you away for his murder."

Lee lifted a brow, giving Kazuya a side long glance. "What are you talking about? What evidence could you possibly possess that I will not have destroyed in a matter of moments?" The Silver Devil was calling his bluff.

"Good luck with the unfortunate break-in you had this early morning…I trust your loft will need tremendous work." The Mishima heir brushed his nails against his leather trench, giving the manicured surface a quick shine. "Blood samples and various sexually deviant devices littered with both fingerprints and DNA, a Phlebotomy kit with filled syringe tubes of Hwoarang's blood…and an obvious stash of illegal chemical substances will certainly make up for any potential botches in the soon to be pending investigation." Kazuya smiled demonically.

"Now, if only you were vain enough to record your sessions, I trust a verdict in a crime of passion, rife with deviation and fetish, could take a record of moments…or even seconds." The Middle Age Mishima crossed his legs slowly. "You wouldn't happen to be recording those interludes, would you?"

"You son of a bitch," Lee hissed, curling his fingers into a fist, his almond eyes narrowing with seething rage and yet trapped like a rat in a cage. The Limo door opened at the hand of Kazuya's personal chauffer, letting the refreshing breeze of dawning daylight cleanse the smell of sex and leather lingering along the interior.

"As if there was ever a doubt?" Kazuya chuckled. "Now, you can either sit back and play by the rules…or you can take your chances on the street. I would be careful in weighing the options…I am not the only one who watches you."

Kazuya lowered his sunglasses, revealing that insinuating glint of his blood red eye to back up his previous statement. "Decide, Chaolan. Have we reached the point of no return…or merely a break for further negotiations?"

The Silver Devil pursed his lips and waved two fingers to the driver, indicating Kazuya's victory as the solid door closed gently. "Let us not have to undergo this conversation again, Chaolan. Twice now you have been bested and warned, a third time is unacceptable." The Mishima heir uncrossed his legs slowly, letting his hips arch upward slightly to adjust his positioning. "I do so love to see you defenseless, Lee. And to think all of the time and money you poured into resurrecting me from deaths doorstep….all to soothe a guilty conscience."

The Silver Devil ran his hand back through his hair, the feathery molten tresses falling in locks across his beautiful almond eyes. "A mistake I would not make twice, I assure you."

"Now that this business is settled, I will allow you to show me penance for your insolence. Apologize with that lovely, Korean mouth. Give me suck as though the rice paddies were burning white with napalm," Kazuya purred, a dark smile slowly forming on his lips.

(Chapter Break)

Jin startled awake with a sudden, painful groan. Breathing was a shot of agony, as though his ribs had been horrifically bruised. As he forced his eyes to open, heavy bands of the sun's full rise nearly blinded him…and the Japanese youth realized he must have landed at a great height.

Shivering as he raised his head, Jin fought against the strain of his back, making his neck a suddenly heavy thing that protested cooperation. The Japanese youth was nearly past the point of his own endurance, when dark eyes fell on the shape of Hwoarang…

The Blood Talon was lying on his side, amidst a field of black feathers. Jin could barely make out the rise and fall of his lover's chest and he fought to focus harder, to see deeper. "Seung?" he managed, the dull ache of his ribs making it difficult to draw in the breath he needed just to whisper the sacred name onto the wind.

The Korean youth did not stir and Jin was slowly starting to panic. Raising himself up on his arms, the Japanese tried desperately to draw himself to a crawl…realizing only then that the Devil within must have run out of its own endurance. His nails were clawed as they pressed into the hard tar of the rooftop. The transformation back to his natural form…had not been complete.

"Seung!" Jin cried out again, using the power of the Demon's grip to pull him along on his stomach, the heavy pressure of the zippered sweat suit jacket he wore digging into his flesh as he moved like a worm on its belly.

The Japanese youth moved slowly, turning his strained neck to see precisely how the Demon had landed. A trail of oily black feathers shimmered with eerie iridescence in a streak from the far end of the rooftop to the place had Jin crawled from. By instinct, the Japanese youth knew it had been a crash landing, braced by a shield of wings. Hwoarang must have rolled out from the Devil's grip as the Entity took the brunt of the impact.

Taking a deep breath, Jin steadily made his way to his lover's side…the closer he drew the more he came to realize Hwoarang had been injured. Blood pooled beneath the Korean youth's body, blackened against the tar…

"Seung, wake up…" The Japanese youth shuddered, his clawed hand finally reaching his tortured lover. With every last effort he could manage, Jin sat up, wincing at the motion as pain reflexes shivered throughout his body. He could not call on the Demon's reserves; the Entity had already tapped past its limit into those wells. The Devil was so quiet, Jin could almost believed the creature never existed.

But, the Japanese youth knew better.

Jin pushed Hwoarang over onto his back and at the motion, found the source of the injury. The left side, below the ribs…the Korean youth's shirt was covered in fresh blood, a pint if not more spread out like black tides on the rooftop.

A clawed hand reached forward, slicing open the stained shirt with the barest flick of sharp talons. Horrified eyes fell on Hwoarang's pale skin, just below the ribs…the wound, however grave it might have seemed by the blood spill…was knitted cleanly together. Not a single rip disturbed flesh or muscle…

"How can this be…how can any of it be?" Jin wanted to scream but he could not muster the energy. His mind worked in sluggish reasoning as he watched the scant rise and fall of the Korean youth's chest.

"He's lost too much blood..." came the frightening realization and with it, a severe choice. He could slice his own skin open and feed his lover the blood that would ensure his survival, but thicken the curse it was obvious Hwoarang now possessed. Or, Jin could let his lover go. Let the Korean youth find peace in death's salvation, to know an afterlife without the Devil Gene within his blood.

The decision was made in a single blink of sable lashes as Jin lifted his left hand, using the talons of his right to slice through the skin of his forearm. Wincing at the sensation, the Japanese youth used what remained of his quickly draining strength to lift Hwoarang's head gently…and draw the bleeding wound to his lover's open and pale petal soft lips.

"Drink, Seung. Replenish what you have lost and heal…drink as we have in the past…in love and desire…in silent vows…to care for each other." Jin closed his eyes tightly as he felt the gravity of pull on his blood, the thick sound of vital liquid filling his lover's throat and slowly siphoning down into the depths of Hwoarang's pale body.

"I am sorry, Seung. I am sorry for what I have done to you…this infection, this curse. It is as I feared all along…my love has damned you to hell…and now, there is no return from its grip." Jin shuddered, trying to force his head to remain upright, though it bobbed slightly forward beneath the strain and agony, so near to his own unconsciousness.

"…I will continue to feed you, every day and every night if it is necessary…I will care for you…until a thousand sunsets from tomorrow…I will love you as no other could. I promise, Seung. I won't let it take you…" Jin closed his eyes, his back heaving slightly as seconds fell into minutes…and he could take the exhaustion and blood loss no more.

Drawing his arm up, Jin grasped the hem of his borrowed sweat pants, ripping it with one clean sweep of his talons. Wrapping the makeshift bandage around the shorn skin, Jin fell to his side, his head landing at Hwoarang's feet. "Come back to me...Seung…please…don't leave me here, alone…"

The Japanese youth fell into the complete blackness of total exhaustion, his wounded arm braced protectively along his lover's long, deadly legs.

(Chapter Break)

"I found these…in the alleyway. But there was no sign of anyone else." Ling tried to catch her sobered breath, one hand braced against her own heaving chest as she held the captive evidence outward to be inspected by Steve and Julia. The Chinese youth bit the edge of her lip as the duo's eyes fell over the feathers in her grasp. She just could not bring herself to tell them what she had seen…if she had, in fact, seen anything at all. The sunrise playing down the dark, saline slicked alley…surely had her hallucinating?

The British Boxer slid into a shade of color, paler than he was. "Those have to be Hwoarang's," he whispered, as though saying so aloud would bring the Blood Talon rushing back for his misplaced treasure. "I thought he had only one?"

Julia quirked a brow, looking from Steve to the oddly iridescent shimmer on the radiant, large black feathers Ling clutched. "There are no birds here, in Japan, that would require plumage so ornate…or so long. It would need to come from a terribly heavy or impressively large bird…a condor perhaps? Vulture? Surely this is something Hwoarang found during his time in the Military?"

"I am not sure, I just know he had one he always kept with him. That's the story I told you about the tattoo on his back. I went with him the night it was inked, piss drunk as he was." Steve shuddered. "I really don't like those things…and what is it on there, is that blood?"

Julia reached her hand out toward the one of the feathers Ling held. "May I?" She asked softly as the Ling raised one of them in offering. With precision, the Chinese-American youth ran her delicate fingers against the bristles toward the stem…up to the tip of the plume and downward to the brace that connected the feather to its host.

The brushing motion yielded flecks of dried blood at the stem of the quill. "This feather is fresh. It was ripped clean…and quickly." Julia lifted the edge up her inspecting eyes, magnified by her glasses. "Can you see here? The crack up the middle and the jagged edge that runs to the bottom?"

Steve tried to focus on the area Julia pointed out but he just could not seem to concentrate. "Ling, do you see it?"

The Chinese youth bit the edge of her lip as she tilted her head to the side, following the line of Julia's fingers. "Yeah, I do see it. Do you think they all have the same thing on them? And, well, what does it mean?"

Julia shook her head. "Is it possible Hwoarang has…an imported bird, maybe, something he might have gotten into customs through the Korean military?"

Steve shook his head, turning slightly as he looked down, drawing in a shaky breath. "Hwoarang might be a lot of things, but he's not an abuser of animals. I doubt he would hurt a living creature…that wasn't human, I mean."

Julia regarded Steve over the rim of her glasses. "Korean culture does not look down upon slaughtering and eating cats and dogs. The country is not a tremendous economic power, Steve." She sighed, returning her gaze to the cracked quill of the feather.

"What other reasons would he have an obvious and possibly rare species of bird? He goes by the street name 'Blood Talon'. Birds obviously have talons, the main method of killing is the use of their claws." Julia tried to theorize any potential, realistic leads this might draw to the surface. "It is an obvious source of power for him…but not exactly like a totem. Perhaps it has a connection to his deceased lover, Jin Kazama. May the Great Spirits give wind to his wings…"

Julia said the last statement as a quick prayer for the dead, but now, her eyes grew wide. "Wind to his wings! Does Hwoarang practice any particular religion? Voodoo or Santeria perhaps?"

"Now you're just drawing at straws!" Steve huffed, defensively. "Ling, back me up here. Hwoarang can be a right twat, but he is none of those things. The only religion he knows is whiskey and cigarettes…and the thrill of a good street fight…"

"…and his love for Jin Kazama." Julia took a slow breath. "Grief does horrible things to people, Steve. It happens everyday…and you know that's true…."

The British boxer had to only recall his few hours spent in Hwoarang's room to bring to mind just how possessed the Blood Talon had been. Where Steve enjoyed a touch of pain, even expected it when it came to two males actively engaging… the Korean had been lost in delving out an insane level of agony, as though it would drive the Boxer into instant release. Was this the practice the Blood Talon and Jin Kazama used in their bedroom?

Hwoarang had always been rough to bottom or to top when they were together…but never had there been such vicious pleasure, such complete sadism in the act before. Could it be Julia had stumbled onto something? The Korean had called him Jin in the midst of their act…perhaps Hwoarang was honestly and truly possessed and destructive in his grief?

"You guys, I'm getting really scared. This doesn't sound like Hwoarang at all…" Ling bit the edge of her manicured nail, just a little too hard…forcing her hand to shake off the self inflicted pain.

"You said yourself…at the café, what he did to the room…and almost did to you." Julia cautioned, as the remaining feathers shivered in Lings grasp. With delicate fingers, she withdrew them all. "If you don't mind, I will hold onto these and maybe give it some meditation…see if anything stirs."

Ling shrugged her shoulders. "Well, if they belonged to Hwoarang, then obviously he didn't hang around long enough to care if he left them."

Steve took a deep breath, drawing himself out of internal reverie. "We should get back to the hotel, the kick off celebration is tomorrow and after that, the tournament begins. I don't know about you ladies, but right now, I need some sleep."

"Definitely agreed." Ling sighed, glancing around the sun glistened streets. "I hope we see Hwoarang there. I am really started to get worried about that crazy Korean."

(Chapter Break)

Kazuya jolted suddenly, his hands grasping either side of the leather seats within the limo. Blinking rapidly, dark shielded eyes scanned across the whirling streets to either side of him, not far from where Chaolan had been left off in Uptown Tokyo. "It cannot be."

The Mishima heir took a deep breath and focused his Chi. The sensation was like a sharp blade cutting through soft skin. The Blood connection to Hwoarang was suddenly…drowning.

_//We are present in the Korean, yes. But another source has replaced our dominance. Kazama Jin has returned at last…and he has fed our vessel full.//_

"How can that be? Neither Hwoarang nor Jin could not have known what we have done with the boy." Kazuya raised his hand, pinching the bridge of his nose tightly.

_//The lover's presence beside Hwoarang has given further strength to the first infection of the Demon…we are still present…and our influence is still powerful…though I fear not nearly as strong as it should be. The Korean will live…and you will need Chaolan's help.//_

"I will not trust that infectious bitch to another task," Kazuya hissed.

_//We must know the state of blood within the Korean. He must have another injection…//_

"That will be near impossible with the return of Kazama Jin." The Mishima heir growled. And only then, did a new idea begin to form. "Yes. I will contact Chaolan in the morning…we are not yet bested, even if the bait has in fact drawn Kazama Jin's return. I will not be satisfied until the Korean is dead."

A dark smile lifted at the edges of Kazuya's lips. "There are other ways…"

(Chapter Break)

Hwoarang breathed in deeply as he strained to open his eyes. Sienna burned in the bright sunlight, causing the youth to wince and blink repeatedly. "Where the fuck am I?"

Groaning, the Blood Talon drew himself upright, but not before shivering back a thick agony that ripped through his body. Every muscle was sore and the heat of late afternoon sun was making him feel like he was on fire. Sienna eyes received the first view of the surroundings. A rooftop…somewhere in Uptown Tokyo judging by the way every other building was dwarfed. "How in the hell?"

Clearing his dry throat, Hwoarang shook off the cobwebs of his mind and stumbled to stretch out his legs. Never had he felt so stiff, like he had been dragged through hell itself. Throwing a side kick out to the right, the Korean youth heard the snap of underused muscles scream….and in that moment he realized…there was no sickness.

"Jin." The Blood Talon smiled, recalling for that brief flash, the dream of not only seeing, but feeling the spirit of his lover come to him. There could be no other explanation for the edge taken off the sickness…or the taste of familiar blood in his throat. A copper so rich, so fulfilling…it was as though the past several months had been a dream. "Well, that still doesn't answer how the fuck I got up here?"

In his euphoria to be free of the sickness, the Korean youth placed his palms against his knees, grimacing slightly at the filthy stains on his clothing as he arched his spine, stretching the stiff muscles into life. And that was when he saw a sight he just couldn't wrap his head around. "Feathers?"

Arching a brow, Hwoarang dropped down to one knee, questioning eyes searching the littered ground for every large, iridescent quill. Just to the side of where he had slept, a thick lucid puddle glittered like a black sea frozen in place by sunlight. Tracing his fingers through the sticky mass, it instantly reddened his skin.

Drawing the substance beneath his nose, the Korean youth realized it was blood…but it didn't smell like the blood he knew…or the blood he could taste in the back of his throat. Quickly scanning himself, sienna eyes fell on an odd, dark stain in his left side, just beneath his ribs. The source of the blood? Had he hurt himself?

Raising the filthy shirt upward, the Korean youth studied the flesh beneath the material. Not even a scrape…no remnant of blood…just a very eerie, macabre feeling growing in the back of his mind.

"What the fuck?" Hwoarang wiped his fingertips against his already stained jeans, casting his glance further out. There was an entire field of more feathers, littered like an oily runway some distance from where he awoke. "Alright…I'm starting to freak out…"

The Blood Talon stood slowly, scanning the area as paranoia filled his thoughts. From length to width, Hwoarang tried to judge every possible angle like it was a crime scene. And that was the moment fantasy and reality melded into one perfect silhouette.

"Seung," came a voice so familiar, so warm, it made the Blood Talon take several steps back, until his knees buckled against a steam pipe jutting out of the rooftop.

"What in holy hell?" the Korean youth whispered, suddenly not so sure he was awake after all. His eyes had to be deceiving him, or maybe this was a dehydration induced mirage, there could be no other explanations. Well, maybe heat exhaustion. _It can't be…_

Jin came around a small area just beyond the Korean's line of site. He drew closer to Hwoarang, a slow smile forming against his lips. Stepping out of the sunlight's blinding rays, the Japanese youth paused just paces away from the Blood Talon.

Jin took a long moment to behold every animated feature he had longed to touch and taste since the moment he left his lover's side, months ago. Never did he believe Hwoarang would be standing before him, alive and warm. Not after his fears of the Blood Talon's death at Kazuya's hand…a pain that triggered the release of the Devil Within him. The frightening state he found his lover in during the earliest hours of this morning had nearly broken his spirit…but now, his Seung was here, and awake at last. "How do you feel?"

Hwoarang closed his eyes tightly, for a moment he swore he was going to lose consciousness again. "This isn't happening," he mumbled, his hands bracing through matted copper tendrils as he breathed out quickly.

Jin took another step closer. "Seung? Hey, look at me….are you alright?"

"You're not really here. You can't be. You're dead." Dark, sculpted brows knitted together as the Blood Talon refused to open his eyes. "Why do I keep doing this to myself…why can't I just let you go…"

The Japanese youth could hear the pain in his lover's voice. Only then, did Jin realize that much like his own presumptions… Hwoarang truly did believe he no longer drew breath.

Daring to draw himself within a scant distance from the Korean youth, Jin gently pressed his fingers beneath Hwoarang's lowered chin. The contact seeming to make his lover grimace as the battle raged on in the Blood Talon's mind. "Seung. Look at me…"

The Korean drew his eyes up slowly, letting the fire rings of sienna hold Jin's own dark, warm gaze. "I am not dead, Seung. Though you may have believed otherwise. I have been in the Devil's grasp…trapped in my grief…when I thought you had been killed…"

Hwoarang shook his head to the side to clear the fog he felt descending on him once more, but Jin would not release the tender touch beneath his chin. "No…"

"Yes, Seung. I am here…and I am real. And if I knew you never met the dark fate I feared…I never would have left you," Jin said softly as he felt Hwoarang's eyes return to his.

"Jin…" The Korean youth whispered the name like an ancient prayer, long forgotten to the world of man and machine, as tears formed at the rims of his eyes. For the first time in two and a half years of falling in and out with the synch of Jin's life, coming to his rescue and stepping between the Japanese youth and danger, Hwoarang was now the one being saved. Rescued by the only person he ever would have allowed the sincerity of the act. It would take the strength of a demon to pull the Blood Talon back from the edge…and it seemed his order was ready.

"Forgive me, Seung…forgive me for what I have done to you…forgive me for not being here with you…when you needed me most," Jin whispered softly, holding the Korean youth's fire rimmed sienna eyes like a sacred relic.

"Forgive me for everything I have done…" Hwoarang did not say another word. Sliding his fingers into obsidian tendrils, the Blood Talon drew Jin closer to him, dark eyes holding his lover's until the soft connection was finally made.

Jin's hands drew in against the Korean youth's body, falling with practiced ease to Hwoarang's narrow hips. Silken lips parted to receive the warm velvet of his lover's taste…trembling at the moment of unity and the hot, sugary flavor of the Blood Talons slick muscle gaining easy access to the depth of his mouth.

Hwoarang moaned as his tongue brushed the welcoming heat of Jin's own muscle, lips parting further as he entwined the slick sensation, drawing in warm summer air against the half exposed dance. The Korean youth swallowed a slow, shaking breath from the heat of his lover's mouth, fingers entwining the ebon silk he had dreamed for so many nights of touching, just one more time.

"I missed you…so fucking much," Hwoarang moaned again, breaking away for just long enough to speak the words before retaking his lover's mouth with a hunger he swore he had never felt before.

Jin rolled his head to the side as the Blood Talon's mouth claimed him with voracious appetite, making every nerve ending in his body scream with such perfect expertise. He felt the pitch intensify as Hwoarang tilted his head, taking deeper laps into his thirsty mouth.

The Japanese youth drew away from the sugary taste of his lover's mouth, his breath coming in slow rolling gasps as he felt Hwoarang's breath wash over kiss wet lips. "I missed you too…" Jin managed, drinking in his lover's own panting breath.

"God damn, one minute my world has gone to shit…the next I am so hot I can't fucking see straight," Hwoarang moaned, licking his lips clean of Jin's taste with savoring pleasure.

"There is a set of stairs, on the other side of the roof…" Jin managed, trying to refocus from the wanton energy he felt coursing through his body. Neither he, nor Hwoarang could let this go any further…not until they were to safety. "If we are careful, we can get down the central well without tripping any alarms. That's what I was checking out, while you slept. I am sorry I was not with you the moment you awoke."

Hwoarang was too lost in the bliss of being reunited with Jin to care about the trivial details of finding a way off the rooftop. "I will fucking sprout wings myself to get you home. With you by my side, baby, I can fly."

Jin's lips formed into a slow, easy smile. "Home. I like the way that sounds. But I wouldn't push it with the wing thing…it's really not all it's cracked up to be…"

TBC...

PS. I hope you have enjoyed this latest chapter. Now, I have a few questions to ask you. 

1. Are you a writer? 

2. Are you a Tekken fan? 

3. Have you often wondered what drives your favorite characters? 

4. Are you open minded to Yaoi, Het, Yuri? 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I invite you to join my email based RPG on yahoo. 

This is your chance to live the excitement of Tekken 4 with as much imagination as you want! 

New to Email RPG? Not to worry, your in good hands. 

Most characters available. To join, you must be creative and open minded...and able to meet the age guideline to join this adult group. Email me for info/link/invite. 


	13. Trade Secrets

Chapter Eleven

Trade Secrets

Hwoarang pushed the door open with a sudden start, leaving his keys dangling in the lock as he tried to capture his breath, turning his eyes back toward the hallway stairs. Jin was not far behind the Korean, shaking off the cold summer rain as he drew into the welcoming warmth of the Blood Talon's apartment.

"Well that was several miles of surprise." Hwoarang pressed his drenched arms to the wall to brace himself upward, his heart pounding desperately in his chest. He was soaked to the bone and even before he had finished kicking his boots off a puddle had already formed where he had been standing.

Jin breathed out harshly, wiping his face of the torrents of rain that had been captured by, and continued to leak from, thick ebon tendrils. "I think the surprise wore off after the first mile." He smiled, following the Korean youth's lead in kicking off his boots.

The rain had come as a sudden onslaught; a deluge of epic proportions for two would be travelers running through the uptown Tokyo streets, clear across to the Yurei district.

"I guess it's a good thing I didn't have my bike with me." The Blood Talon slid his fingers through liquid coppery tendrils, turning his eyes to gaze over Jin as though he were seeing a phantom born of desperation… a vivid dream he could barely cling to in the hour close to waking. "You're drenched. Let me grab some towels or something."

As the Korean youth began to walk past him, Jin slid his fingers against Hwoarang's naked arm. The Blood Talon turned with the speed of a recoiling spring… haunted eyes holding Jin's dark orbs. "Seung, is everything okay?"

"Yeah… just fine." He feigned a half cocked smile as his eyes closed for a long moment before drawing Jin's grip from his skin. "I just didn't expect that is all…" _Didn't expect you to be alive… and standing right here in front of me. Fuck, Jin, if you only knew all the shit I have done in your name… when I thought you were dead. If only you knew just how far I fell from grace… just to have a piece of you inside of me…_

Jin nodded and let his touch fall away, watching the way his lover's head hung softly as he trod lightly across the hallway before disappearing into the bedroom. There was no one in this world, if not Seung… no one truly worthy of his love and his lust the way the Korean was. That passion had been fueled like fire, tested in the forge where even iron met its fate…melting before demanding hands that guided fate itself.

It was a long moment that had passed and Jin ran his fingers through wet ebon shocks of hair. Withdrawing his jacket, the Japanese youth slowly discarded the wet material from his upper body and tossed it to the side… most of the garment falling into the stainless steel sink in the kitchen. Hwoarang was taking a longer time than would have been explainable and Jin was too quickly becoming curious.

The Japanese youth slowly meandered his way from the hall into the living room, denoting every change in the apartment since the last time he had been here. The carpet was no longer spread across the bare wood floor… and a few effects were also missing from the room as he recalled it. Jin ran his fingers along the seat of the leather couch, as dark eyes lingered on the shadowed portal just beyond his line of sight.

The bedroom. How many perfect hours were locked into memory on such sacred ground. Jin could almost hear the echo of intermingled mewls of lust reverberating from the inner walls as he slowly stepped in against the door frame.

"Seung?" he whispered softly, blinking rapidly as he crossed the threshold to sanctification…

When no answer returned to him, Jin stepped more fully into the bedroom, catching the glint of the Blood Talon's reflection in the mirror. Hwoarang had his arms braced on either side of the sink, his head tipped down lightly as shocks of liquid copper breathed in and out in a pattern from slightly parted lips. Sienna eyes looked searchingly into the porcelain veneer of the sink… as though the Blood Talon refused to meet his own eyes through the reflective surface so near to his face.

"Seung?" Jin repeated once more, bracing his fingers along the door jamb as he leaned partially into the bathroom.

Hwoarang looked up and blinked for a moment as his lover's presence seemed to herald him back to reality. "I was just… getting towels. I hate that… you know, you walk into a room and for a minute forget what the fuck you were doing there? I am too damn young to start loosing my mind." It was a feeble attempt at a cover, but it was worth a chance.

"Seung…what is wrong? You are not quite yourself…" the Japanese youth asked, as the Korean busied himself by turning his back and reaching into the linen closet…his hands moving around in the depths as he withdrew two bath towels.

"Of course I am not myself. I am a little bit of you, now." The Blood Talon cleared his throat, sending out one hand with the edge of a folded towel that had lost its shape in translation. He still could not bring himself to meet Jin's eyes…not when the recollection of his fall from grace was made so much sharper by Jin's return from the ether.

"Hey…" Jin said softly, letting the towel drop to the floor as he reached his hand toward the Korean youth's pale face. "Seung, look at me," the Japanese said softly as he let the brush of his palm swallow the curve of Hwoarang's angular cheek.

The Blood Talon closed his eyes for a moment as he felt himself shiver at the tender touch. His lids slowly parted amidst a flutter of sable lashes before he felt himself embraced by his lover's deep gaze. "I'm sorry Jin…I guess I need a few minutes to adjust…yanno…kinda ground myself in reality."

Heavy brows furrowed. "Why do your eyes look so heavy with worry…so lost? I am here with you….at last, reunited…"

"I know baby…" Hwoarang's eyes visibly winced. Was this not what he wanted since the moment Jin left his side? Of course… but would his lover still hold him sacred…if he knew the depth of his secrets…the fullness of his shame and degradation.

The Korean youth forced himself to look up and almost instantly felt himself melt into the youth's dark eyes. Hwoarang's hand lifted and molded in against his lover's touch, flesh suspended and lingering to his cheek. The Blood Talon's fingers entwined with Jin's tender hold, as his head gently fell forward…forehead bracing to the Japanese youth's.

"I fucking missed you so much Jin. It hurt so bad…" Hwoarang inhaled a shivering breath as his eyes held his lover's from this close, gentle position. An intimate moment of connections remembered.

"I know…" Jin whispered softly as he drank in the warm pain in his lover's breath.

"No baby…you don't know. I felt like I was dying inside without you…nothing has ever hurt so bad…nothing… and I just can't lose you again." The Korean youth raised his other hand, dropping the second towel he had withdrawn as his palm slid along the back of Jin's strong neck. This was his moment of honesty…a singular experience that stripped away the pretense of his raging fire to reveal the consumed logs stacked in sacrificial rite as a pyre…his core of emotion no longer forced to hide just beneath the surface.

"You won't lose me again, Seung. It may have taken me some time but I came for you…" Jin felt his heart thunder against his ribcage at the echo of pain and fear that mingled in the ether of his mate's eyes. That was what Hwoarang was to him…and it was never more clear than in this perfect moment.

Mated. By Blood, by spirit, by demon…by love.

"Fuck…I need you baby…more than I have ever needed someone before. The Korean youth's hot breath fell against Jin's lips, drawing the youth closer as though magnetized to Hwoarang's nearness.

"What do you need, Seung?" Jin asked softly, his eyes wincing closed as a flame shot up his spine…every nerve fiber tingling just beneath his skin.

"I need you to make these bad memories go away…take them from me…the only way we know how," the Blood Talon groaned, his lips brushing Jin's as he spoke…sienna eyes transforming as they held the dark heat of his lover's.

A circle of fire transposed over the already tepid sienna that greeted him and Jin felt his breath hitch past his lips. Something dark stirred inside of Hwoarang…

_//Our mate…is reaching for us…yours in flesh and mine in spirit…//_

_Both are mine. And only mine._ Jin's eyes rolled back as a heavy breath passed his lips. With every last effort he spoke inwardly to the demon before he banished the unholy voice to a place he could no longer hear it. As the Japanese youth's gaze refocused, there now was only the slow, visible transformation inside of the Korean's eyes…and his own flashed like mercury in response…a trigger for his own darkness…

"Through pain?" Jin half gasped as the beacon of his lover's eyes began to glow like liquid fire…the mark of his mate…the mark of the Devil Gene now affixed to the Korean's soul. "Is that what you desire, Seung? Pain and control?"

"I don't want the nightmares to hurt anymore, Jin…replace them…take them from my eyes…and drown me in your blood…and your agony. I want to be worthy of them…again." Hwoarang moaned, tilting his head to the side with feigning coy gentility.

"Tell me what it is you want of me, Seung." Jin rasped for breath, his body shivering as he felt his lover tense in his arms. "Now is not the time to play coy with me…" The words came as a hiss…a breath of sound forced to pass between elongating canine teeth. Hwoarang's display of demonic infection was forcing a near transformation in the Japanese youth.

"Hurt me, Jin….fuck me and hurt me…" Hwoarang felt his lips shiver as the gleaming white tips of Jin's teeth fell into view…matching the glint of eyes so mercury they were nearly opaque. The fire of the Korean's inner darkness heralded like a beacon from the enflamed kindling of glowing red eyes…his body quivering as his lover took on a nearly demonic aura…

Jin scented the air, suddenly rife with the Korean's musk…the aroma mingling with his own hardened desire. Complimentary pheromones raged in a dance between them, mingling and mating in the scant air as the Japanese youth's shoulders began to ache…

"Have you been unworthy?" Jin hissed as the scent of the Korean's blood and lust overflowed his senses.

"Yes…but never to your spirit…" Hwoarang hissed and spoke his truth. For his infidelity, the name he cried out in the dark…the vision of his fantasy in the middle of the most unspeakable acts had always been, and could only be, Jin.

The Blood Talon's newly heightened demonic sight watched the tribal ink spread down along Jin's face…making his lover's eyes glow like watery beacons of enticing evil between freshly inked tattoos of demonic nature. The Korean could smell the feathers ready to burst through his lovers shoulders…tinged in darkness so deep it held an aura all its own. He wanted them…like vengeance…to wrap around his body and absolve his sins…his scars.

Jin grasped a heavy hold of the Blood Talon's neck, forcing the glowing fire eyes of his lover to turn heavenward with sensual agony, licking a beacon of fire through the darkness of the room. So the devil within had been correct, his lover had been unfaithful. "Beg forgiveness."

"Jin-kun…..Ahhh…forgive…." the Korean hissed as Jin's fingers pressed his throat upward In desperate anxiety. The Blood Talon lifted his chin higher, drawing himself up on tip toes to alleviate the pressure as he both melded into and sought relief from, his lover's heated grip.

"You are not begging enough," Jin hissed, the hold on Hwoarang's swan like neck tightening as he forced the Korean from his comfort and flipped the youth around…pressing the Blood Talon face first into the wall.

The Japanese let his grip slide to the back of Hwoarang's neck, beneath wet copper tendrils as his free hand reached around the front of his lover's body…unbuttoning damp jeans as he forced them downward to rest along the youths thighs. "Spread yourself open to me…and let me judge the extent of your crimes…"

"Fuck…Jin…" Hwoarang hissed, his cheek pressed to the cold flat of the white wall as his lover exposed his lower body, "…you're making me hot…"

The half transformed youth pressed his naked torso against the Korean's back, his breath hot and heavy as it drifted along his lover's cheek. Possession dripped from his aura as his lips pulled back, revealing the full sharpness of elongated canines. The ache in his shoulders was slowly becoming unbearable….and he could feel his heat stir against Hwoarang's naked backside, forcing his thick shaft to twitch against such feral closeness. With a sudden push backward, Jin stood panting…steps away from his lover's pleading body. "Get on the bed…I want you on your back…not facing away from me…"

Shaking, the Blood Talon turned around, pressing his back to the wall to cool the dull ache that was starting to build at his shoulders. Heavy breath passed his lips as glowing eyes beheld the transformations on Jin's skin…reaching up into the opaqueness of his lover's gaze. The sight was breathtaking…and Hwoarang licked his lips in wanton anticipation. Jin had never looked so feral, so wanton, and yet so completely in control. Even through the heaving of such a massive chest… The darkness that surrounded the Japanese youth's body…was captivating.

Jin closed in, even as the Korean youth began to move, stripping out of his damp jeans with every motion until he stood with his knees braced to the mattress…hard length eager and dripping white pearls of desire from the thick tip. With a single look from Jin, Hwoarang pressed himself down on the bed, spreading his thighs as he watched his lover approach, tearing away restraining wet fabric in the process.

"Prepare yourself for me," Jin hissed as he drew over to the bed, bracing his hands on the Korean's bent knees…his gaze captivated by the haunting fire in his mates eyes. So beautiful, so eager…so demonic.

With a shaking breath, Hwoarang lifted his fingers…reaching below his spread thighs to push the digits against his hot cleft…letting the tip breech the guarding ring as he writhed before the glittering nearly opaque eyes of his lover. "Fuck, Jin…like this…?" The Korean spread his thighs further to showcase the visual, eliciting a heavy breath from his lover.

"Exactly like that…" Jin groaned as he drew onto the bed with one knee knelt between his lover's legs. The sight of Hwoarang was nearly too much to bear and it raised his dark energy to see his lover so hard, so eager…so willing to fuck himself just to get a taste of Jin….just to please the Japanese. "The one that had you last…make you this eager for pain, Seung?"

_How did Jin know? _"No…" Hwoarang groaned and it was truth. No one could bring him to this pitch…and he slid his finger deeper into the velvet of his core, as far as he could reach. The Korean writhed on the bed, eyes closing as Jin studied him with an almost icy glare.

"If I find you have ever…from this day forward…taken any into your body again…I will rip you to shreds with my own hands…do you hear me, Seung." The omission was almost too much and it raised Jin's possessive aura even higher to think his lover…his mate…sought pain...lust…release from another body. It made no matter the Korean had thought him dead…what belonged to him…was his alone to enjoy.

Hwoarang felt his body skip a heartbeat as he moaned, spreading himself open further…nothing could ever feel like Jin…and nothing ever would again…from this moment forth. "Please…"

Jin leaned down, grasping Hwoarang's hand from pleasuring his core…and drew it to his lips…scenting, tasting that hot musk that awaited him. If there had been no omission, the Japanese could still have scented the infidelity in the taste of his lover's musk…but all of this was about to be cleansed…for eternity. Licking the tainted fingers of the Blood Talon's pleasure, Jin half lowered his eyes and moaned. The taste of his mate was like water to a thirsting throat.

"This is…your last absolution," Jin hissed as he grasped the Korean's deadly legs and dragged them over his shoulders…pressing his body in against Hwoarang's. With a free hand, the Japanese youth took hold of his heavy length and pressed the throbbing tip between the Korean's spread cleft.

"Do not move your eyes from mine, Seung…" Jin exposed his teeth as he spoke, drinking in the feral motion of his lover beneath him as he thrust deep…to the very hilt inside of Hwoarang's body…feeling his lover split open beneath his control. "Bleed for me…"

Hwoarang cried out but kept the fire of his demonic eyes to Jin's… "Fuck!" he screamed out as his body responded violently…rocking up till his forehead met the half transformed Japanese's own…never taking his eyes from the icy mercury of Jin's. "Oh god…Jin…hurts…"

Jin breathed out heavily as he felt the spasms milk around his length, his hands falling on either side of his lover's head as the Koreans lower body was half lifted up in the motion. "You are mine to hurt…mine to destroy…my mate… "

"Jin…" Hwoarang breathed out with shaking lungs, quivering as the pain wrote itself beneath his skin and into the dark of his very soul. "Baby…please…" _Pain. You recall it. Lee Chaolan….how he hurt you, humiliated you…made you renounce your lover…._

The red fire of the Korean's demonic eyes flickered as Jin drank in his lover's shaking breath. "Please?"

"Hurt me…more…" His lover's stillness inside of him was agony…but he wanted, needed more. "Fuck me…I need you…Jin…please…"

"If it is pain you want...then it is pain you will receive," Jin groaned, withdrawing his forehead from Hwoarang's…though his eyes kept still on the fire that met his icy glare. He moved inside of the Korean's body…thrusting with brutality…punishment…absolution…until he could feel his lover's muscles scream at the dark onslaught. The Blood Talon's core was the gate of heaven itself…eager and tight…

_He isn't Chaolan…he is my maker…the only one I have ever loved…and the only one I will. No renouncing…would ever change that._ Hwoarang felt Jin push deeper inside of him…thrusting like a thirsty blade into eager skin. The brush of his lover's swollen crown against his prostate made the Korean scream…and every scream released the scent of blood from his core. "Break me…" he begged as shaking hands rose up to Jin's sweating shoulders in an almost intimate way.

Jin complied eagerly, pushing into his lover's body with a wanton taste for destruction…eager to drink from Hwoarang's pain….every sensation was mind shattering…drawing out the darkness inside of the Japanese youth's soul. "Seung…take me…all of me. "

"FUCK!" the Korean youth screamed as Jin pistoned harder into his body, making his nerves flash like white lightning as searing agony bent into his skin. He writhed away from and yet into the feeling…overcome as his screams went soundless….drawn back into his body.

"You…are my…mate!" Jin let free a heavy gasp, losing himself in his lover's skin. "Say it….fuck, Seung…say it!" Glowing white eyes held the fire beneath him as beads of sweat dripped from the Japanese youth's skin like rain onto the Blood Talon's own.

Hwoarang writhed heavier, feeling all the heat of his body, the dark power lurking within his spirit, pooling into one place. He was so close to release…so fucking close…and Jin was slowing down… "Jin!"

"Say it…" The Japanese youth stilled himself, nearly rolling his eyes as the smell of lust and blood filled his senses. "…And mean it….I will hold you here all night…until I believe you."

Breathless words filled the Korean youth's ears as Jin bled sweat onto his skin. Trapped between grinding bodies, Hwoarang felt his length burn with the need to release… "Your mate….fuck, Jin…I am yours…in body and in soul…your demon…your creation…your fucking mate…"

Jin leaned down and took Hwoarang's mouth with savage desire…his tongue snaking through the slick muscle of the Korean's as sweating, heaving chests pressed together…once more trapping his lover's throbbing length between them.

Drawing up suddenly, Jin withdrew his upper body from the Blood Talon's…kneeling completely now as one hand grasped Hwoarang's aching length. "Cum for me…Seung…"

Jin thrust violently, his hand overtaking a motion to match his rhythm in the Korean's and pulling on the heavy, hot shaft as he pressed intense pain into Hwoarang's skin. The Blood Talon writhed…grasping at the comforter below him and twisting the material in time to his screams of pure bliss, pure agony… "I'm cuming…fuck Jin…"

"My mate…" the Japanese cried out, his body arching deep into his lover's core…till the hot, wet sound of slapping skin became the mantra beneath panting breaths.

"Fuck!" Hwoarang cried out as his lover's tight grip stroked him…heavy length splitting him in two. With a final arch of his back, the Korean youth released…heavy bands of seed spreading like a geyser over his lover's torso…falling like rain on his own skin.

"Seung!" Jin breathed back, his hand still stroking his lover's sensitive flesh…he thrust in more viciously, tasting blood and lust mingle with release like a spring shower…his shaft ached as tight milking sensations wrapped around him…taking him over the edge.

Jin held his breath as he stilled, ribbons of lust jetting in spurts into Hwoarang's core…claiming the space as his own…Seung's soul…was his now…and for all time…in life or in death…

Gasping, Hwoarang reached his hand up against Jin's sweating face. "My mate…"

Jin watched the dim fire flicker out in Hwoarang's eyes, unable to catch his breath as he leaned into the Korean's hand and placed a soft kiss to the finger closest to his mouth. He could feel his own half transformations recede. "My mate…"

(Chapter Break)

Chang leaned against the rental car, his cane pressed into the curve of his fingers as he searched the departing passengers scurrying from Narita airport in Uptown Tokyo to awaiting taxis, or the arms of loved ones.

The Korean airway flight carrying Baek Do San had landed moments ago…and now, the wait through customs and baggage was excruciating. Reaching down into the pocket of his jeans, Chang withdrew his cell-phone. Nearly noon. And still no message icon from Hwoarang.

"Shiba!" (fuck), Chang hissed in native tongue, glancing up to see if the shape of Do San had entered his space yet. Nothing. And nothing from Hwoarang. His blood brother was starting to really worry him. After dropping the bomb on the devil gene and the youth's infection, Chang had done nothing but pray for a solution…and for Seung's salvation. How the hell was he going to explain the Gang leader's disappearance to Baek? Why did Hwoarang not return one of the fifty phone calls and text messages Chang had left him? What was the point of having a cell phone if the Blood Talon never answered the damn thing.

Chang really wished he had not quit smoking. If just for the calming effect on his nerves. Ever since Kazama Jin came into his blood brother's life, there had been nothing but strife…nothing but one disaster after the next. How many more lives would have to be claimed before this curse…or as Seung saw it, this gift, finally wore out its welcome.

Tipping his head back, Chang exhaled warm, heavy air. The rains were coming, he could feel it in his tortured, half paralyzed limb, even if there was not a single cloud in the sky to contrast the rich blue hue of Japanese daylight.

"Chang!" came the voice that brought the Korean youth back to himself. A broad smile fell over his lips as the cheerful image of Baek Do San greeted his eyes at last. It had been a long while since he had looked on the Tae Kwon Do Master…and time had finally caught up to the youthfulness Chang recalled from earlier days.

"Welcome to Japan." The youth smiled, parting his arms for the embrace the elder grasped him into. "How was the flight?"

Do San pulled back, giving Chang the once over and breathing deep when his eyes held the cane the youth gripped in his hand. The boy was too young for such a life long infirmary…and still, Do San knew little about the exact situation that created it.

Clearing his throat, and his thoughts, Baek adjusted the strap of the bag that hung from his muscular shoulder. "The flight was longer than I recall. But then, it has been many years since last I have visited the Land of the Rising Sun. I would have been earlier but I needed to convert currency. What a shock how the Won has dropped against the Yen. I was forced to exchange more money than I anticipated. It was a good thing I withdrew extra, just in case."

"There is an ATM at the hotel. Do you want to go there first, or do you want something to eat?" Chang drew himself off of the rented car and leaned heavily on the cane to adjust the distance from street to curb.

"I should check in first and register for the tournament." Do San prepared to open the door to the vehicle as Chang moved around him, flipping the keys from his pocket along his fingers. "I nearly forgot…how the Japanese drive on this side of the road. I suppose it is a good thing you are behind the wheel…"

Chang laughed as Do San moved off of the curb and around to the left side of the vehicle. "It took me some time to get used to it as well. I prefer the opposite of how they do it here. But then, I suppose it's cultural."

As Chang situated himself in the vehicle, Baek clipped his seat belt and leaned back into the lumbar supports. Nearly 4hrs of sitting stationary in the uncomfortable space provided during the flight had taken its toll on the Martial Arts Master. He was beginning to feel his age.

"So, where is Seung?" Do San asked as Chang turned the ignition, roaring the rental car to life. "Did you not tell him I was coming?"

"To be honest, Baek…I really don't know where Seung is. But I am sure he will turn up later, he always does." Chang tried to feign a smile and make light of the situation but the worry was still something he could not manage to cloak. And the fact he could not meet Do San's questioning gaze said a world without using a single word.

"When did you see him last?" Baek said, that fatherly tone creeping up in his voice. Do San let his eyes drift to the road as Chang pulled out of the space previously occupied in front of the Narita International Airport.

"Um, it was last night. At his place. I told him you were coming in the morning but I know he had some things to take care of." The youth studied the line of traffic in front of him and let free a heavy sigh.

"Then that is where we will go, after I settle in," Baek said in a tone that told Chang his word was final. It was time, in the Master's mind, to unravel the mystery Seung had become since their reuniting months before. Something was very wrong with the Tae Kwon Do prodigy and although Hwoarang had often been a fiery mystery in their long years of near family ties, it was time to shed light on the enigma.

"Yes, sir," Chang responded as he drew his finger to his lips, parting the gateway to dig enamel into the already tortured nail. _Seung…please be anywhere…but home._

_(Chapter Break) _

Hwoarang dipped his face into the hot font of pulsing water, using his hands to rub the liquid into his skin and wash away the primal delight of the reuniting with his mate. The youth breathed in the steam, exhaling the vapor like smoke as he let his back melt to the wet tile wall.

"Baby…you coming?" his half cracked voice, still sore from the screams of earlier delight, called out just as Jin opened the door to the steam laden bathroom.

"As though I would miss the opportunity." The Japanese youth licked his lips as Hwoarang opened the door to the glass shower for him. The sight of that muscular, naked body glittering with steam and water was an instant intoxicant. The Blood Talon's musk lingered beneath the scent of soap…reaching out like grasping fingers to Jin's sensibilities.

"Don't want the water to get cold…so get your ass in here," the Korean hissed as Jin looked up and made his way to the shower. As the Japanese stepped in, Hwoarang moved the nozzle, giving his lover a wealth of hot water to unprepared flesh.

"Do you always shower...this hot?" Jin shielded his skin from the searing pressure as his eyes beheld his lover's, half in disbelief.

"Military training," the Korean hissed with a half cocked smile as his body drew like a magnet against his lover's skin. Raising his hands slowly, Hwoarang let them draw hot water along the Japanese youth's skin…licking his lips slowly.

"It has served you well." Jin smiled and drew the Korean in against his wet skin. The sensation was intense…dark…and completely perfect. Slowly, the Japanese lifted his lips against his lover's damp neck, letting himself drown for that moment in the sensation of drenched copper tendrils.

Hwoarang moaned as Jin's lips moved against his neck, arms draping beneath the Japanese youth's back to draw him closer. Nothing could ever feel the way his lover could, pressed to his body in such a perfect way.

"I am hungry, Seung…" Jin purred as his tongue laved along the wet flesh of his lover's neck. "For so long I have wished to drink your blood…" The words were sharp and hotter than the font of water that spread between pressed bodies. Jin's eyes turned upwards to meet his lover's…gaze flashing silver…even as canine teeth began to elongate…

"Fuck, you're making me hungry," the Korean youth's eyes flashed into a halo of fire, matching the silver magnificence of Jin's altered gaze. A dull ache built in his mouth as back teeth ground together with a sudden and exquisite pain... "Drink from me, Jin…" he purred as the tip of his tongue slithered along the anomaly of sharpening, elongating teeth.

"Seung…you bring out the devil in me," the Japanese hissed as he slid his lips against Hwoarang's neck.

The Korean youth shivered…panting for breath as Jin violently tore into his lover's flesh…breaking it open till he could feel the hot red font pulsing in his throat.

"Fuck, Jin…I feel you…in me." Seung pressed Jin back against the shower wall, driving his neck into the bite of his lover's teeth…even as his own bared with a hiss. "I need you…"

(Chapter Break)

"The door is open," Baek Do San said with a sharp glance back to Chang, who struggled with the remaining few steps on the five flight ascension to Hwoarang's apartment. The Tae Kwon Do Master let his fingers drape along the keys still in the lock. The captured ring held the icon of the South Korean flag. "They are Hwoarang's."

Chang gasped for breath as he made the last step up to the landing. He had tried desperately to keep Do San busy…even to the point of pretending to be lost as they drove. Baek recalled the streets enough, even after 22 years, to realize where they had made a wrong turn to end up in the downtown districts. In his youth long ago he had roamed these streets with Lei Wulong and Jun Kazama as company. They paused for hours at local establishments to discuss the King of Iron Fist Tournament 2.

Eventually, however, Baek was taken to the hotel and the two found a spot to lunch.

What would have been considered yet another forgivable blunder strained Baek's last store of patience… locating Hwoarang's apartment in the midst of a rain storm had been a chore and Do San had simply had enough when he realized Chang was stalling. Now, it was left for Chang to wonder…if delaying Do Sans' arrival had been worth it…if his Blood Brother was in trouble.

"I hear something." Baek stood straight, pushing the door open with the tips of his fingers to minimize the sound of his approach. There was a sound of agony…the groans of brutality…and it echoed from what Do San could see as the back area of the apartment.

"Baek, wait…" Chang could hear the vocalization.

"Stay here," Baek commanded and turned, his attention focused on stilling the sound of his movements. He made his way slowly down the narrow hallway leading into the living room, as Chang slid into the doorway, watching his Master make headway with silent stealth.

The sounds grew nearer as Baek peered inside the bedroom, the grey light of the rainy afternoon blotted out by heavy dark curtains. Hwoarang was never one to enjoy sunlight, especially at the odd hours of sleep the prodigy kept.

Stepping into the bedroom, Do San slid his back against the armoire, trying to keep as still as possible. The echo of agonized groans beneath a heavy spray of water assailed his ears, filling the Master with a raising sense of panic. What could make Seung so careless as to leave his door unguarded? What could be happening in the bathroom…the source of the strongest noises….to render the youth so uncharacteristically unvigilant to his surroundings? Was the youth in pain? Injured? Near dead and unable to speak?

Unable to stand quiet for another moment, Baek Do San dashed in, his shoulder brushing against the bathroom door…


End file.
